AT Property Rights CP

Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

1. Perm, do the counter-plan. The PP doesn’t necessitate top-down regulation.

2. Private property rights can’t solve the environment. The profit motive will remain the root cause of environmental damage.

Beder 1 writes1

By accepting market instruments as a solution to environmental problems, environmentalists have accepted the conservative definition of the problem- that environmental degradation is caused by a failure to ‘value’ the environment and a lack of properly defined property rights and therefore environmental degradation results from a failure of the market to attach a price to environmental goods and services [Beder:1996]. By allowing this redefinition of the environmental problem, environmentalists and others not only forestall criticism of the market system but in fact implicitly agree that an extension of markets is the only way to solve the problem. The root of the environmental problem, however, is the priority given to economic considerations over environmental considerations. Economic instruments, privatisation and environmental ‘valuation’ ensure that priority is still given to economic goals and they enable firms to make decisions that affect others on the basis of their own economic interests. Even if those economic interests have been slightly modified to give a small economic value to environmental impacts, the basic paradigm remains unchanged: whenever big profits can be made the environment will be destroyed.

3. Perm, do both.

Property rights alone can’t solve the environment. Only my evidence directly tests this.

Gilmour et al 12 writes2

This study does not question the potential benefits of defining clear and limited access rights to natural resources. Indeed, in line with previous work in these fisheries (Gilmour et al. 2011) and other natural resources (Berkes et al. 1989, Ostrom 1990, Acheson 2006b, Townsend et al. 2008), the limited and well-defined nature of the resource using groups is likely to have been critical in enabling cooperation and stewardship. Rather, we cast doubt on the inferred, often taken for granted link between private ownership, in the form of ITQs, and stewardship. This is the first study to directly test the veracity of this assumption. Our data show that nonrights-owners actually propose more conservative catch levels than do rights- owners. This indicates that private rights are less important than commonly suggested, or may even entail a range of disincentives to sustainability. These are important caveats given recent, high profile reports heralding private rights as the solution to overfishing (Costello et al. 2008, Heal and Schlenker 2008). The social and environmental drawbacks to such rights (Sumaila 2010) suggest that alternative arrangements, perhaps grounded in communal (Wingard 2000) or limited-tenure systems (Bromley 2005, Costello and Kaffine 2008), should be considered in more detail. Our results also emphasize the complexity of resource users’ behavior. Financial incentives may be important, but are not necessarily straightforward; the differing incentives facing active resource harvesters, versus resource owners not involved in harvesting, warrants further attention in this regard. Nonfinancial incentives, such as the “drudgery” of work (Durrenberger 1997:162), are important too. Moreover, the very nature of incentives is shaped by an interaction between subjective perceptions, such as those of resource condition, and underlying attitudes and values (Gelcich et al. 2005, Sorice et al. 2011). The problem is that, despite their importance, the effects of these nonstructural factors are poorly understood, particularly in comparison to simplified models of profit-maximizing behavior. This problem reflects broader issues in

1 Sharon Beder (University of Wollongong). “Neoliberal Think Tanks and Free Market Environmentalism.” University of Wollongong Research Online. 2001. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=artspapers 2 Patrick Gilmour (Department of Zoology, University of Melbourne), Robert Day and Peter Dwyer (Department of Resource Management and Geology, University of Melbourne). “Using Private Rights to Manage Natural Resources: Is Stewardship Linked to Ownership?” Ecology and Society. 2012. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss3/art1/#conclusion20 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

conservation and natural resource policy, i.e., the use and extension of simple behavioral models to complex systems (McCay and Jentoft 1998). “Good story lines are easily applied to many situations with the risk of misrepresenting the more complex and shifting social, cultural, and ecological relationships and processes at stake” (McCay and Jentoft 1998:23). The fallacy, perhaps, is that while having a vested interest in a resource may encourage sustainable behavior, this does not mean that those with the greatest vested interest will necessarily favor the most sustainable management options. As Caddy and Seijo (2005:72) suggest, “enlightened self- interest” alone is not enough and should be seen in the context of broader incentives and ethical considerations. The complex and often nonlinear characteristics of these social-ecological systems calls for more holistic and integrated research across disciplines to better understand the underlying mechanisms and processes. This is critical for implementing policies that address the related ecological, economic, and social dimensions of these systems.

4. Market-based solutions to the environment cause extinction. Zizek 8 writes3

(1) Ecology: in spite of the infinite adaptability of capitalism which, in the case of an acute ecological catastrophe or crisis, can easily turn ecology into a new field of capitalist investment and competition, the very nature of the risk involved fundamentally precludes a market solution. Why? Capitalism only works in precise social conditions: it implies trust in the objectified/“reified” mechanism of the market’s “invisible hand” which, as a kind of Cunning of Reason, guarantees that the competition of individual egotisms works for the common good. However, we are in the midst of a radical change. Till now, historical Substance played its role as the medium and foundation of all subjective interventions: whatever social and political subjects did, it was mediated and ultimately dominated—overdetermined—by the historical Substance. What looms on the horizon today is the unheard-of possibility that a subjective intervention will intervene directly into the historical Substance, catastrophically disturbing its run by triggering an ecological catastrophe, a fateful biogenetic mutation, a nuclear or similar militarysocial catastrophe, etc. No longer can we rely on the safeguarding role of the limited scope of our acts: it no longer holds that, whatever we do, history will go on. For the first time in human history, the act of a single socio- political agent effectively can alter and even interrupt the global historical process, so that, ironically, it is only today that we can say that the historical process should effectively be conceived “not only as Substance, but also as Subject.” This is why, when confronted with singular catastrophic prospects (say, a political group that intends to attack its enemy with nuclear or biological weapons), we no longer can rely on the standard logic of the “Cunning of Reason” which, precisely, presupposes the primacy of the historical Substance over acting subjects: we no longer can adopt the stance of “let the enemy who threatens us deploy its potentials and thereby self-destruct”—the price for letting the historical Reason do its work is too high since, in the meantime, we may all perish along with the enemy.

3 Slavoj Zizek (Slovenian cultural critic and philosopher). “Nature and its Discontents.” SubStance, Issue 117, Volume 37, Number 3. 2008. http://engl273g-f11-cerrone.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/Zizek+Nature+and+its+Discontents.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

5. Neg authors are biased. Free market environmentalism is pushed for by corporate- funded think tanks.

Beder 1 writes4

Corporate-funded think tanks have played a central role in promoting free market environmentalism onto the policy agenda throughout the English speaking world. These think tanks have consistently opposed government regulation and advocated the virtues of a ‘free’ market unconstrained by a burden of red tape. The role of think tanks in the establishment of this ‘neoliberal’ agenda in the US and the UK in recent decades has been well documented.2 However their central role in a range of specific policy areas, such as environmental policy, has been neglected. Conservative think tanks are generally set up as private, tax-exempt, research and advocacy institutes, and are largely funded by foundations and corporations. They have sought to insert neoliberal ideology into environmental policy. They advocate the use of the market to allocate scarce environmental resources such as wilderness and clean air and promote the replacement of legislation with voluntary industry agreements, reinforced or newly created property rights and economic instruments. Presidents from Carter through to Clinton have made wide use of think tank personnel to fill high level government positions [Abelson:1995 108-09; Smith:1991 206-07]. Think tanks also employ ex-government officials giving them access to politicians and others in government. The interchange of personnel between think tanks and government officials observed in the US is now a feature of the Australian scene. In Britain a few conservative think tanks have been extremely influential. These think tanks, particularly the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), played a major role in setting the policy agenda of the Thatcher government, providing it with most of its policy initiatives, including trade union ‘reforms,’ privatisation of public authorities such as water and electricity, and welfare cuts.3 The influence of think tanks continues with the Blair government. To be effective, think tanks insert themselves into the networks of people who are influential in particular areas of policy. They organise conferences, seminars and workshops, publish books, briefing papers, journals and media releases for policymakers, journalists and people able to sway the policy makers. They liase with bureaucrats, consultants, interest groups, lobbyists and others. They seek to provide advice directly to government officials and to government agencies and committees, through consultancies or through testimony at hearings. Ultimately think tank employees become policy-makers themselves, having established their credentials as a vital part of the relevant policy/issue network. 2 In their efforts to influence and become part of the policy-making process think tanks have more in common with interest groups or pressure groups than academic institutions. Nevertheless employees of think tanks are treated by the media as independent experts and, as such, are often preferred to representatives from universities or interest groups as a source of expert opinion. Some Key Think Tanks Think tanks put a great deal of effort and expense into ensuring the work of their ‘scholars’ is marketed and disseminated effectively. The Heritage Foundation in the US has often been credited with changing the face of think tanks with its aggressive marketing tactics. The greater proportion of its budget goes on marketing and fund raising, including 35-40 per cent of its budget on public relations. Many other think tanks have emulated Heritages’ marketing techniques.4 The Heritage Foundation has a budget of over $25 million per year of which almost 90% comes from more than 6000 private donors. These donors include corporations such as automobile manufacturers, coal, oil, chemical, tobacco companies, foundations (about 25% of the foundation’s total income).5 Heritage promotes deregulation of industry, an unrestrained free market and privatisation, including the sell off of public lands. In line with this ideology it advocates free market solutions to environmental problems or free market environmentalism [Anon:1992 49-53; Shanahan:1993]. It seeks to cast doubt on environmental problems such as global warming and to lobby against legislation or international agreements to prevent such problems. The Institute of Economic Affairs, (IEA) in the UK which has promoted laissezfaire libertarianism or ‘economic liberalism’ for decades. It formed an Environmental Unit and launched Global Warming: Apocalypse or Hot Air in 1994. It promoted property rights as a way of protecting the environment and sought to apply free market solutions to all aspects of society including environmental problems and to reduce the role of government and regulation [Desai:1994 29]. For example, one of its publications stated: “There is a strong case for letting market forces work in energy... A policy for energy is not only unnecessary but undesirable. It hampers market adjustment and induces producers to spend time influencing government rather than improving efficiency.” [Weaver:1989 573] In Australia a prominent conservative/neoliberal think tank, and the oldest, is the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). Almost one third of IPA’s $1.5 million annual budget comes from mining and manufacturing companies. The IPA produces articles challenging the greenhouse consensus, attacking mandatory recycling, and promoting the use of pesticides. [Burton:1995 279], [IPA Report:1991 1-3]. Additionally a number of smaller specialist think tanks have been set up, particularly in the US, to promote free market environmentalism, including the 3 Competitive Enterprise Institute, (CEI) the Political Economy Research Centre and the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). These particular examples are merely illustrative of the much larger push that has been evident in the last decades. What they have in common is the desire to downplay the urgency of environmental problems, to reduce environmental regulations, and to apply neoliberal policies to environmental problems, as has occurred in other areas of policy. These ideologically motivated think tanks have sought to discredit environmental legislation, giving it the pejorative label ‘command and control’, highlighting its deficiencies and ineffectiveness (ineffectiveness that corporations and corporate-funded think tanks have done their best to ensure). In their place they have advocated market-based mechanisms including price-based and rights-based measures.

4 Sharon Beder (University of Wollongong). “Neoliberal Think Tanks and Free Market Environmentalism.” University of Wollongong Research Online. 2001. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=artspapers Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

6. Resource extraction revenues weaken governments, risks civil war and turns property rights.

Ross 3 writes5

Natural resource revenues can, ironically, weaken governments – making them less likely to resolve social conflicts and provide public goods, like health care and education. There are two ways this can happen. One way is by retarding the effectiveness of a state’s bureaucracy. Some scholars have found that when governments are funded through oil or mineral revenues instead of taxes, they are left with weaker governments. Much of a government’s “strength” comes from its capacity to extract taxes from the population – a capacity that often takes decades to develop. A government that fails to develop this ability may also be unable to establish the type of bureaucracy that can provide effective public goods, and ameliorate social conflicts. The result may be a heightened danger of civil war.18 A second route is by weakening the state’s territorial control. If a country has resources that are highly valuable, and can be mined with little training or investment – such as alluvial gemstones, coltan or tanzalite – it will be difficult for the government to provide law and order in the extractive region. These kinds of mineral deposits attract large numbers of artisanal miners to what are typically rural, “frontier” regions, where the government’s influence is weak. Land claims in these areas become valuable, yet the weakness of the government’s authority makes it hard for claimants to enforce or protect their property rights through legal measures. As a result, they often resort to extralegal measures, including violence, to establish claims and adjudicate disputes. The utility of violence creates a demand for organizations – like criminal gangs, warlords, and rogue military units – that for a price will use extralegal means to enforce mineral claims.19 In addition, the high value-to-weight ratios of these minerals make them difficult to tax and easy to smuggle; these qualities produce high corruption levels inside the government, and large smuggling operations outside of it. The combination of weak, corrupt government authority, and strong criminal organizations can facilitate the rise of rebel movements. The case of Sierra Leone illustrates how alluvial minerals, scattered over a wide area, can weaken a government’s territorial control and lead to civil war. From the 1930s to the 1960s, Sierra Leone had a robust, mineral-based economy that produced iron ore, gold, bauxite, and rutile (titanium oxide), in addition to diamonds. 21 Most of these resources were mined by foreign firms or state-owned companies that provided the government with large revenues, and enormous patronage resources. But in the 1970s and early 1980’s Sierra Leone’s iron ore and kimberlite diamonds were worked out. The mining of alluvial diamonds by informal methods became, by default, the country’s main source of non-agricultural wealth. The Sierra Leone government had long had difficulty exercising its authority over the diamond fields, which was home to tens of thousands of unlicensed miners, plus a network of armed gangs, private armies and paramilitary forces that sold protection services to miners and traders.22 Even before civil war broke out in 1991, Sierra Leone’s growing dependence on alluvial diamonds was causing problems for the government: instead of generating revenues, the diamond fields were generating extraordinary levels of corruption. In 1988 official diamond exports were worth $22,000, while illicit diamond exports were worth perhaps $250 million.23 As long as the national economy was otherwise in good shape, the government was able to manage the corruption, warlords, and private armies in the diamond fields. But in the 1980s the country entered an economic crisis, due to the high price of imported oil, dropping commodity prices, the mining out of kimberlite diamond and iron ore deposits, and economically ruinous government policies. From 1975 to 1990, government revenues dropped from 14.5 percent to just 3.9 percent of GDP. Moreover, in 1985 the politically artful President, Siaka Stevens handed power over to his less adept successor, Joseph Momoh. Collectively, these changes led to the deterioration of the central government’s influence over the diamond-rich areas. Hence when a small group of insurgents called the Revolutionary United Front – totalling just one hundred men – crossed the border from Liberia in March 1991, the Sierra Leone government was too weak to repel them. Instead, the country was drawn into a civil war that lasted ten years, caused between 20,000 and 50,000 deaths, and displaced at least one-third of the population.

5 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Coase Theorem 1. The Coase Theorem fails. It assumes zero transaction costs, but all exchanges cost non-zero in transactions. 2. Property rights alone don’t solve. Hahnel and Sheeran 9 write6 It may be reasonable to describe Coasian negotiations as the laissez-faire solution to the problem of externalities, and therefore, as an alternative to government intervention. However, it is inaccurate and misleading to describe Coasian negotiation as a market process. Establishing property rights over externalities is not the same as creating a market for externalities. Establishing property rights is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for enabling market forces to emerge. Recalling that Coase (wisely) confined his discussion to the case of a single polluter and a single victim, Coasian negotiations can only be seen as one-on-one negotiations between two parties. There is no market in Coase’s scenario, much less a competitive market. Competitive markets are situations where there are many sellers and many buyers of a good. In competitive markets, individual actors do not negotiate price with one another at all, but instead take the market price as given and decide how much they are willing to buy or sell at that price. Even when markets are less than competitive there are more than two parties involved. In a monopolistic (monopsonistic) market there are still many buyers (sellers) and it is assumed that the law of uniform price will determine a single selling price for all units of the good in the market.5 The process by which a polluter and a victim might negotiate a change from OD (or from zero, depending on the assignment of the property right) to OE is not a market process at all, but a one-on-one negotiation.6 Before discussing what the literature tells us about bilateral negotiations of this kind, it is important to point out two erroneous conclusions that derive from treating Coasian negotiations as if they were a market process. Misleading Conclusions about Payments: The first mistake relates to the size payment we expect would be necessary for both polluter and victim to agree to the efficient level of emissions. Authors who misinterpret the Coasian situation as a market process searching for an “equilibrium” price per unit of emissions are tempted to predict a definitive payment equal to the price where the marginal profits for the polluter are equal to the marginal damages of the victim, OF, times either the number of units abated if the polluter has the property right, (OD-OE), or the number of units emitted if the victim has the property right, OE. It is easy to make this mistake. Assume the polluter has the property right. If we think of the victim as negotiating abatement with the polluter unit by unit, starting from OD and proceeding to OE where all mutually beneficial deals have been exhausted, then the payment for the last unit of abatement would have to be OF. The victim would pay no more and the polluter would take no less than OF for the last unit of abatement to arrive at OE. If this were a market situation where the law of uniform price should apply, all units of abatement would have to sell for OF, and the victim would therefore have to pay the polluter an amount equal to OF times (OD-OE), or the area of the rectangle DECG, to induce the polluter to cut emissions from OD to OE. But there is no market, and therefore there are no market forces to secure the law of uniform price. Moreover, if the victim negotiates abatement unit by unit, for every unit of abatement prior to the very last unit before OE, there are a range of prices that would leave both the victim and polluter better off. For example, if the victim wanted to negotiate a further unit of abatement starting from OU, any price less than UW and greater than UR would leave both the polluter and victim better off. It is not clear what price in that range they would agree on, and no reason to believe they would settle on OF for any other unit of abatement prior to the last. In truth, there is no reason the polluter and victim must settle on a single price to be paid per unit of abatement at all. Once we realize that the traditional treatment of Coasian negotiations only makes sense if we imagine the polluter and the victim staring at Figure 1 together and negotiating how to share an efficiency gain whose size they both know, it becomes apparent there is no reason for them to negotiate abatement unit by unit at all, and also no reason for them to agree on a single price to be paid for each unit of abatement. 7 In Coasian negotiations all the polluter and victim need to do is agree on how much the victim must pay the polluter – in grand sum total – to cut emissions from OD to OE. However, when seen in this light it is far from obvious what size payment would be required to secure the deal. If polluter and victim truly did have to agree on a single price per unit of abatement, the total payment would have to be equal to the area of the rectangle DECG to exhaust all mutually beneficial deals since no other price would secure the last unit of abatement. But since, in fact, they do not have to agree on a single price per unit, there are many different total payments the victim could make to the polluter to reduce emissions from OD to OE that would be mutually beneficial. For example, if the victim paid the polluter an amount slightly less than the area of figure DECA, the polluter would capture almost the entire efficiency gain from negotiations and the victim would only be slightly better off. On the other hand, if the victim paid an amount only slightly larger than the area of triangle DEC, the victim would capture almost the entire efficiency gain and the polluter would be only slightly better off. Deducing the upper and lower bounds of the size of the payment is not difficult, but as we see below, more definitive conclusions about how players would divide the efficiency gain depends very much on how bargaining is carried out. The absurdity of the market interpretation is further illustrated by considering what this line of reasoning implies about what factors would determine how the efficiency gain would be divided. As the marginal profit and damage lines are constructed in Figure 1, a payment equal to the area of DECG divides the efficiency gain, the area of DCA, equally between the polluter and victim. The victim’s welfare improves by an amount equal to the area of GCA, while the polluter gains by an amount equal to the area of DCG. As long as the absolute value of the slope of the marginal profit line is equal to the absolute value of the slope of the marginal damage line, as it is in Figure 1, the areas of triangles DCG and GCA will be equal. However, if Figure 1 were redrawn so that the absolute value of the slope of the marginal profit line were less than the absolute value of the slope of the marginal damage line the area of triangle DCG would be smaller than the area of triangle GCA and the victim would receive more of the efficiency gain than the polluter. 8 But there is no reason to believe that the division of the efficiency gain should depend on the relative slopes of the marginal profit and damage lines, much less that the efficiency gain would be divided equally if the absolute values of the slopes of the two lines happened to be the same. Instead the division of any efficiency gain will depend on the relative bargaining power of the polluter and victim, as Coase (1960) himself remarked, and as game theoretic modeling of different bargaining procedures that advantage one player over another demonstrate, as discussed below. Assuming that Coasian negotiations are a market driven process with a single price per unit of abatement that exhausts all efficiency gains, leads to the erroneous conclusion that how efficiency gains are split depends on the relative slopes of the marginal damage and profit curves. Misleading Conclusions about Abatements: Independent of what size payment would be required to secure a deal, misinterpreting Coasian negotiations as a market process also leads to unwarranted conclusions about the likelihood that parties will negotiate their way to an efficient level of pollution. When Coasian negotiations are misinterpreted as a market process, analysts can easily deceive themselves that the kind of forces that drive markets to their equilibrium will drive negotiations to OE units of pollution and a price per unit of abatement equal to OF. But just as there are no market forces to drive the price per unit to OF, there are no market forces to drive the level of emissions to OE. If the polluter and victim agree to a level of emissions equal to OE it must be for some other reason, not because there are market forces which drive the bargain to that outcome. It is clear why omniscient polluters would never reduce pollution below OE. It is also tautologically true that if polluters pollute more than OE they will have failed to exhaust all mutually beneficial deals. But do protagonists always negotiate efficiently and leave no mutually beneficial deals unconsummated? It is time to consider what game theory has to tell us about these kinds of negotiations.

6 Robin Hahnel (Professor Emeritus of Economics at American University and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Sustainable Processes at Portland State University) and Kristen Sheeran (Director of Economics for Equity and the Environment Network at Ecotrust, and Associate Professor of Economics at St. Mary’s College of Maryland). “Misinterpreting the Coase Theorem.” 2009. http://e3network.net/resources/Misinterpreting_the_Coase_Theorem.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Spending DA

EP saves billions per year. UN 13 writes7 For twenty years, the international community has aspired to integrate the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability, but no country has yet achieved patterns of consumption and production that could sustain global prosperity in the coming decades. A new agenda will need to set out the core elements of sustainable lifestyles that can work for all. The Panel is convinced that national and local governments, businesses and individuals must transform the way they generate and consume energy, travel and transport goods, use water and grow food. Especially in developed countries, incentives and new mind-sets can spark massive investment in moving towards a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, while promoting more sustainable and more efficient consumption and production. Developing countries, when they get access to new technologies, can leapfrog straight to new, more sustainable and more efficient consumption and production. Both approaches are simply smart public policy. It is sometimes argued that global limits on carbon emissions will force developing countries to sacrifice growth to accommodate the lifestyles of the rich, or that developed countries will have to stop growing so that developing countries can develop – substituting one source of pollution for another. We do not believe that such trade-offs are necessary. Mankind’s capacity for innovation, and the many alternatives that already exist, mean that sustainable development can, and must, allow people in all countries to achieve their aspirations. At least one-third of the activities needed to lower global carbon emissions to reasonable levels, such as switching to LED lighting to conserve electricity, more than pay for themselves under current market conditions. Consumers will pay more up front if they can see future savings clearly and if the right incentives are in place to make the switch. Examples abound of smart, feasible, cost-effective, green economy policies: improved vehicle aerodynamics, constructing buildings for energy efficiency, recycling waste, generating electricity from landfill gas—and new technologies are constantly coming on-stream. But concerted efforts are needed to develop and adopt them. There are other ways to reduce carbon emissions at very little cost; for example restoring soil, managing grasslands and forests in a sustainable way. Healthcare costs can fall significantly with a switch to clean transport or power generation, helping offset the costs. But incentives – taxes, subsidies and regulations – must be in place to encourage this – incentives that are largely not in place now. With the right incentives, and some certainty about the rules, many of the world’s largest companies are prepared to commit themselves to moving to sustainable modes of production on a large scale. In developing countries too, the benefits of investing in sustainable development are high, especially if they get access to new technologies. Small investments to allow cross-border trading in electricity could save sub-Saharan Africa $2.7 billion every year, by substituting hydro for thermal power plants. Sustainable production is far cheaper than “Grow now, clean later.”

7 United Nations. “A NEW GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP: ERADICATE POVERTY AND TRANSFORM ECONOMIES THROUGH SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT.” The Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. 2013. http://www.un.org/sg/management/pdf/HLP_P2015_Report.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Voluntary Incentives CP

Perm; do both. Voluntary incentives rely on government action. Blackman et al 7 writes8

We have used data on some 60,000 industrial facilities and other business in Mexico to identify the drivers of participation in the Clean Industry Program, Mexico’s flagship voluntary regulatory program. We have used duration analysis because it explicitly accounts for the timing of the dependent variable (participation) and the main independent variable of interest (regulatory activity) and because it controls for right censoring. Our results strongly suggest that PROFEPA inspections and fines do motivate participation in the program. Furthermore, inspections and fines are likely closely related elements of the same regulatory action and therefore have a joint impact on the probability of participation. Most inspections are followed by a fine, typically within 12 months. Together, the inspection and fine increase the probability of participation in the program for four to five years after the inspection and three to four years after the fine. The magnitude of the effect is significant: the probability of participation more than doubles for four to five years after an inspection. We also find that, all other things equal, plants are more likely to participate if they sell their goods in overseas markets and to government suppliers, use imported inputs, are large (as measured by gross revenues or capitalization), and are in certain sectors and states. Our results suggest that the Clean Industry Program is not simply comprised of already-clean firms. Rather, it has attracted a significant number of dirty firms under pressure from formal regulatory authorities. Presumably, the dirty firms that joined the program and were awarded a Clean Industry certificate ultimately improved their environmental performance. However, without reliable plant-level data on environmental performance, which to our knowledge are simply not yet available, we are not able to gauge the relative importance of the Clean Industry Program versus other factors as a driver of these improvements. For example, it could be that some of the dirty plants that joined the program would have improved their environmental performance even if they had not joined because they were being inspected and/or fined by PROFEPA and wished to avoid new sanctions. Hence, by demonstrating that fines and inspections are driving dirty firms into Clean Industry program, our analysis can be interpreted as a positive preliminary indication—but by no means proof—that the program itself has generated environmental benefits. What are the broad policy implications of our findings? The results provide limited evidence that voluntary regulation in developing countries may have environmental benefits. But even if these preliminary findings are borne out and reinforced by subsequent research, they will not necessarily imply that voluntary regulation can substitute for poorly performing mandatory regulation. In fact, our study suggests that the Clean Industry Program depends to some extent on the effectiveness of conventional mandatory regulation: plants join the program to escape regulatory sanctions. In other words, our results suggest that effective mandatory regulation—a strong “background threat”—drives the success of voluntary regulation. This conclusion echoes the literature on voluntary regulation in industrialized countries.

8 Allen Blackman (Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future, 1616 P Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20036), Bidisha Lahiri (Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University), William Pizer (Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future) Marisol Rivera Planter (Subdirector of Sectoral, Regional and Commercial Modeling, Instituto Nacional de Ecología, Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, Mexico), and Carlos Muñoz Piña (Director General, Environmental Economics and Policy Research Unit, Instituto Nacional de Ecología). “Voluntary Environmental Regulation in Developing Countries: Mexico’s Clean Industry Program.” Resources for the Future Discussion Paper. July 2007. http://www.erb.umich.edu/News-and-Events/Conferences/arcs-09papers/RFF-DP-07-36.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Democracy NC

1. AI turns the case. It will be used for totalitarian purposes, that’s Tomasik 4-3.

2. TURN – Resource extraction kills democracy. It fuels authoritarian regimes. Pegg 3 writes9

Natural resource wealth has also been shown to depress democratic development. A recent study conducted by a visiting World Bank scholar found that oil and mineral exports have substantial adverse impacts on democratization.72 No similar anti-democratic effects were observed for the production of other primary commodities.73 The study also found that the anti-democratic effects of oil and mineral wealth were more pronounced in poor countries than in rich countries, 74 and that they were present in sub-Saharan Africa.75 Natural resource wealth undermines democratic development by propping up authoritarian regimes and insulating them from domestic pressure to democratize. Authoritarian governments can use resource wealth to buy off interest groups who might otherwise press for increased political accountability. They can also use these rents to finance the apparatus of repression, and to hinder the development of social groups that have economic interests independent of the state.

3. TURN – Resource extraction revenue makes governments undemocratic – citizen complacency and unaccountable military. Ross 3 writes10

The third effect is reduced government accountability. Governments that get their income from natural resources become less democratic – and hence, less accountable – than countries that rely on other revenue sources, such as taxation. One reason for this pattern is that when governments have an abundance of revenues, they use part of their surplus to quell dissent. Sometimes they do this through tax policies: resource-rich governments commonly use their revenues to reduce or eliminate taxes on their populations; in the absence of taxes, people are less likely to demand accountability from their government.24 Other times they do it through spending: greater patronage can also dampen latent pressures for democratization. In some cases governments use their largesse to prevent the formation of independent social groups that might eventually demand political rights.25 Of course, all undemocratic rulers use their fiscal powers to reduce dissent, but governments in resource-rich states tend to have extra revenues at their disposal. A second reason is that oil and mineral-rich governments spend an unusually large fraction of their revenues on the military, which also helps them repress dissent.26 Figure Three illustrates this pattern: it charts the average military spending (as a fraction of Gross National Income) of the twenty most oil and mineral-dependent, and the twenty least oil and mineral-dependent, states in the developing world between 1989 and 1999. Military spending is consistently between two and four times greater in the mineral-rich states than in the mineral-poor states. There are other ways that an extractive industry can boost the influence of the armed forces. Sometime the industry is controlled by the military, which gives the military more independence from, and greater influence over, the civilian government. In Indonesia, for example, the military has a large stake in many forest concessions, and collects fees from oil, gas, and mineral companies. Since this money goes to the military directly, it does not pass through the central government’s normal budgeting procedures, and the legislature has no influence over how it is spent. The result is that the extractive sector helps make the military less accountable to the civilian government, undermining Indonesia’s fragile democracy.

9 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf 10 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

4. TURN – Resource dependence increases corruption. Multiple warrants. Ross 3 writes11

The first mechanism is government corruption. There is strong evidence that when a government gets more of its revenue from oil, minerals, and timber, it is more likely to be corrupt.12 Part of this problem is due to the sheer volume of resource revenues: governments can only absorb, and effectively track, limited amounts of money. Resource wealth often floods governments with more revenue than they can effectively manage. Resource revenues also tend to be collected by governments in ways that are unusually difficult for citizens to track – and unusually easy for crooked officials to divert; hence some of it winds up in off-budget accounts or the pockets of government officials, and is never heard of again. Other problems stem from the volatility of resource revenues. For the last century, the international prices for primary commodities – including oil and minerals – have been more volatile than the prices for manufactured goods.13 Since 1970, this volatility has grown worse.14 This means that when countries become more dependent on oil and minerals exports, they also become more vulnerable to economic shocks. Case studies suggest that the sudden ebb and flow of revenues tends to overwhelm normal budgeting procedures, promote corruption, and weaken the ability of government agencies to remain free from political interference.15 Ironically, the nationalization of foreign oil and minerals firms in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s made states more vulnerable to these kinds of revenue shocks. Before nationalization, foreign corporations typically captured and repatriated a large fraction of any resource rents, including those created by resource shocks. This "drain" of wealth was much resented by developing-state governments. Yet ironically, the repatriation of resource windfalls provided these governments with the unintended benefit of insulating state institutions from the volatility of international commodity markets. By expropriating foreign corporations -- at a time when resource prices were growing even more variable -- resource-exporting governments unwittingly exposed themselves to large market shocks. In theory, governments should be able to buffer their economies against these market shocks by setting up stabilization funds, and perhaps, savings funds. Yet in practice, these funds are often poorly managed and may wind up doing more harm than good.16 There are, unfortunately, many examples of resource-linked corruption. One of the most egregious cases is Angola. According to an IMF report, almost $1 billion disappeared from the Angolan government’s accounts in 2001 alone due to corruption. Fiscal discrepancies over the previous several years represented between 2 and 23 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Most of these losses were linked to the country’s dependence on oil. Large fractions of the signing bonuses for oil contracts disappeared, and the state oil company, Sonangol, was criticized for managing the country’s oil receipts through ‘a web of opaque offshore accounts,’ even though Angolan law requires that the funds be handled by the central bank.17

5. TURN – Reliance on resource revenues weakens governments’ ability to provide public goods. Ross 3 writes12

Natural resource revenues can, ironically, weaken governments – making them less likely to resolve social conflicts and provide public goods, like health care and education. There are two ways this can happen. One way is by retarding the effectiveness of a state’s bureaucracy. Some scholars have found that when governments are funded through oil or mineral revenues instead of taxes, they are left with weaker governments. Much of a government’s “strength” comes from its capacity to extract taxes from the population – a capacity that often takes decades to develop. A government that fails to develop this ability may also be unable to establish the type of bureaucracy that can provide effective public goods, and ameliorate social conflicts. The result may be a heightened danger of civil war.

11 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf 12 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

6. Developing country growth turns democracy. Kurlantzick 3-10 writes13

As protests roiling developing countries have spiraled into government collapse, general instability, and—in the case of Ukraine, at least—possible war, numerous observers have blamed the Obama administration for its seeming passivity. The White House, on this view, has been both over-tolerant of aggressive autocrats like Vladimir Putin and uninterested in standing up for democracy and human rights. President Obama pursues a “feckless foreign policy where nobody believes in America’s strength anymore,” Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said last week. The charge that the Obama White House has been soft on autocracy is hard to make stick. Obama did call for a “reset” in relations with Russia, echoing attempts by George W. Bush and prior presidents to make fresh starts with the Kremlin early in their terms. But the White House has now imposed tough sanctions on Russian leaders. Obama has taken basically the same approach as the Bush administration did to such other autocracies as China and Venezuela, even though his predecessor sometimes hid private conciliation behind tough public condemnations of Chinese or Venezuelan leaders. What’s more, in countries like Venezuela or China, where top leaders can play on anti-U.S. sentiment, harsh public rhetoric from American presidents often backfires, boosting leaders’ popularity. The claim that this White House has ignored fundamental aspects of promoting democracy holds up better than the notion that the administration is soft on autocrats. The U.S. is not the reason these developing nations are struggling with democracy. The countries facing serious unrest—Cambodia, Egypt, Venezuela, Thailand—face serious challenges in having weak institutions, elected leaders who behave like autocrats, and populaces that have become addicted to street protest. The people most important to making these democracies work are their leaders, voters, and activists. But disinterest inside the White House in promoting democracy has exacerbated democracy’s global crisis. With three years left in its term, the Obama administration still has time to try. Right now, in war zones like Ukraine, the U.S. and other wealthy democracies have no time to think long-term. But in many other developing nations that are struggling to make democracy work, outside assistance could play an important—though not the most important—role. Even in Ukraine, if war is averted and peace restored, the right assistance could help democratically end a decade of chaos that got Kiev where it is today. For one thing, rich countries can help democrats in the developing world prevent their economies’ growth rates from stagnating or declining. Slowing growth has sparked protests and collapses of democracies around the world, including in Ukraine. Indeed, the Community of Democracies, a global talk shop of democratic governments, has repeatedly warned that economic stagnation is the biggest threat to democracy. Many “elected autocrats,” such as Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, couldn’t have won office had it not been for severe economic downturns that darkened the reputations of more politically and economically liberal politicians in their countries. It’s easy to write about avoiding stagnation. Every nation in the world, developed or developing, wants to avoid severe economic downturns. But the grave danger of stagnation to emerging democracies’ political survival means that the developed world and its aid organizations must think more carefully about whether economic policies they prescribe are likely to depress developing economies, at least for a time, and thus harm the prospects for democratization. The White House and other leaders can also help developing nations strengthen their democracies, not just hold elections. As we have seen in Cambodia, Venezuela, and elsewhere, simply holding elections does not make a democracy. But Western leaders usually focus almost exclusively on elections. Donors like the U.S. should recalibrate their funding so that larger percentages of aid for democracy go toward building institutions and less toward organizing and holding votes. To shift funding toward foundations of democracy, donors could shift budgeting for democracy promotion from being renewed annually—at the whims of the faltering U.S. Congress—to being renewed every two or three years, a change some that Scandinavian nations already have made. American administrations, whether Democratic or Republican, also too often tend to associate reform with one supposedly groundbreaking leader in a developing nation, a democratic “big man.” In rare cases, such a leader exists: Nelson Mandela was not only dedicated to reform but possessed moral authority and enough control of his political party and allies to almost singlehandedly push South Africa through transition. There has been only one Nelson Mandela. When Washington focuses on an all-important figure such as Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, it detracts from broader support for the country’s transition. And when that leader turns out to be less than perfect, as Suu Kyi has—or much more flawed, as Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai has—American officials act like jilted lovers rather than realizing that there are many other people important to building democracy in these countries.

The resource curse is empirically proven. Sachs and Warner 95 write14

One of the surprising features of economic life is that resource-poor economies often vastly outperform resource-rich economies in economic growth. The basic pattern is evident in a sample of 97 developing countries in figure 1, where we graph each country’s annual growth rate between 1970-1989 in relation to the country’s natural resource-based exports in 1970, measured as a percent of GDP. Resource-based exports are defined as agriculture, minerals, and fuels. On average, countries with a high value of resource-based exports to GDP tend to have a lower growth rate. Later in the paper we will show that this basic negative relationship is present after controlling for other relevant characteristics of the economies, such as initial income levels and trade policies. The oddity of resource-poor economies outperforming resource-rich economies has been a constant motif of economic history. In the seventeenth century, resource-poor Netherlands eclipsed Spain, despite the overflow of gold and silver from the Spanish colonies in the New World. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, resource-poor countries such as Switzerland and Japan surged ahead of resource-abundant economies such as Russia. In the past thirty years, the world’s star performers have been the resource-poor Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) of East Asia – Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore – while many resource-rich economies such as the oil-rich countries of Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, have gone bankrupt.

13 Joshua Kurlantzick (Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations). “Obama Hasn’t Been Developing Democracies’ Best Friend.” Bloomberg Businessweek. March 10th, 2014. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03- 10/obama-hasnt-been-developing-democracies-best-friend 14 Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner (Harvard Institute for International Development). “Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth.” NBER Working Paper. December 1995. http://www.nber.org/papers/w5398.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

7. WTO rules turn democracy. Global Exchange 11 writes15

1. The WTO Is Fundamentally Undemocratic The policies of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the planet, but it is not a democratic, transparent institution. The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. For example, the US Trade Representative gets heavy input for negotiations from 17 “Industry Sector Advisory Committees.” Citizen input by consumer, environmental, human rights and labor organizations is consistently ignored. Even simple requests for information are denied, and the proceedings are held in secret. Who elected this secret global government?

The PP generates momentum to shut down the WTO. Mokhiber and Weissman 99 write16

The WTO eviscerates the Precautionary Principle. WTO rules generally block countries from acting in response to potential risk -- requiring a probability before governments can move to resolve harms to human health or the environment. The WTO squashes diversity. WTO rules establish international health, environmental and other standards as a global ceiling through a process of "harmonization;" countries or even states and cities can only exceed them by overcoming high hurdles. The WTO operates in secrecy. Its tribunals rule on the "legality" of nations' laws, but carry out their work behind closed doors. The WTO limits governments' ability to use their purchasing dollar for human rights, environmental, worker rights and other non-commercial purposes. In general, WTO rules state that governments can make purchases based only on quality and cost considerations. The WTO disallows bans on imports of goods made with child labor. In general, WTO rules do not allow countries to treat products differently based on how they were produced -- irrespective of whether made with brutalized child labor, with workers exposed to toxics or with no regard for species protection. The WTO legitimizes life patents. WTO rules permit and in some cases require patents or similar exclusive protections for life forms. Some of these problems, such as the WTO's penchant for secrecy, could potentially be fixed, but the core problems -- prioritization of commercial over other values, the constraints on democratic decision-making and the bias against local economies -- cannot, for they are inherent in the WTO itself. Because of these unfixable problems, the World Trade Organization should be shut down, sooner rather than later. That doesn't mean interim steps shouldn't be taken. It does mean that beneficial reforms will focus not on adding new areas of competence to the WTO or enhancing its authority, even if the new areas appear desirable (such as labor rights or competition). Instead, the reforms to pursue are those that reduce or limit the WTO's power -- for example, by denying it the authority to invalidate laws passed pursuant to international environmental agreements, limiting application of WTO agricultural rules in the Third World, or eliminating certain subject matters (such as essential medicines or life forms) from coverage under the WTO's intellectual property agreement. These measures are necessary and desirable in their own right, and they would help generate momentum to close down the WTO.

15 Global Exchange (international human rights organization dedicated to promoting social, economic and environmental justice around the world). “Top Reasons to Oppose the WTO.” 2011. http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/wto/oppose 16 Russell Mokhiber (editor of Corporate Crime Reporter) and Robert Weissman (editor of Multinational Monitor). “Top 10 Reasons to Shutter the WTO.” Mother Jones. November 24th, 1999. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1999/11/top-10-reasons- shutter-wto Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

8. Democracy functions poorly now – the PP is key to solve. Tickner and Ketelsen 1 write17 Americans live in a representative democracy based on guaranteed individual rights. They elect representatives who vote on laws designed to protect public health and the environment. They vote for executives who appoint bureaucracies to implement and enforce these laws. The United States has a court system to punish violators of the laws, to defend the collective good, and to protect individual rights against the tyranny of the majority. But democracy has functioned poorly in protecting the health of individuals (both in the workplace and in the community at large) and ecosystems from environmental contamination. All aspects of the systems set up for such protection have been undermined by economic and political pressures, the influence of corporations, and sometimes majority rule or indifference. Democracy and the protection of individual and collective rights are notoriously weak in cases in which activities may have harmful side effects, but current scientific methods cannot fully establish direct cause and effect connections. Future victims of these actions are unknown and likely to remain unidentified. These victims cannot organize a voting block because most people do not know they are or will be victims, or that their children will be. The perpetrator, the polluter, or sometimes a government agency can use the uncertainties of the science to deny to the courts or to the court of public opinion that any harm is being done. Government officials tend to react more swiftly and exercise precaution when the victims of damage are well identified - such as victims of infectious disease or accidents - and when cause and effect links are clear. The same is true of members of the the public, who may be moved to support gun control, for example, because the danger is clear, even if gun violence may never affect them individually. We have even gained protections for those who have no voice in the process, such as plant and animal species near extinction. The causes of species decline are known, the victims are known, and therefore protections are fought for and won. Even in these cases, action takes place only long after the victimization has begun, damage has occurred, and many have suffered. And when the victims remain unproven or unidentified, full health protections for people or ecosystems are rarely achieved under our current system. Various analysts have made this flaw in democratic process starkly clear. Merrell and Van Strum (1990, as cited in O'Brien, 2000, p. 80) posed the following question about pesticide risks: "What would happen if our pesticide risk assessments were so scientifically advanced that assessors knew not only exactly how many people would be harmed by a particular pesticide but also which individuals would be harmed? A permit to release a carcinogenic pesticide into the food system, for instance, would be preceded by a list of those who would contract the cancer. This, however, would constitute premeditated murder. The marked people would be entitled to an injunction on using that pesticide by their Constitutional right to life. However, bureaucrats and the private sector routinely 'get away' with this premeditated murder because the victims are individually anonymous." The fact that our current system allows unidentified individuals to be harmed without their knowledge or consent results in the routine violation of the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and our collective right to health and safety. The precautionary principle is necessary to guarantee this basic right. It says that if there is credible reason to believe that the actions of one entity will hurt another, action should be taken to protect the potential victims.

17 Joel Tickner and Lee Ketelsen (Science and Environmental Health Network). “Democracy and the Precautionary Principle.” The Networker, Vol 6, No. 3. May 2001. http://www.sehn.org/Volume_6-3.html Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT China-Africa Econ DA

Decline in Sino-African resource trade is inevitable. Chang 13 writes18 Nobody believes America can grow its trade with Africa as fast as China will. Yet China has just about hit high tide on the continent, and there are three principal reasons why, despite the prevailing skepticism, America could regain its lead from the Chinese over the next several years. First, China’s economy, after 35 years of virtually uninterrupted growth, is exhausted. The series of Chinese liquidity crises in June is only the most visible result of the country’s long-term down cycle. Manufacturing, the source of China’s decades-long ascent, is already in distress. On Monday, the HSBC Purchasing Managers’ Index showed continued contraction of the factory sector last month, the largest portion of the Chinese economy. This widely followed indicator is in line with China’s disastrous import and export performance in May. According to official numbers, exports increased by just 1.0 percent from the same month last year. More important, imports, a sign of domestic demand, fell 0.3 percent. This year, commodity prices have been tumbling across the board because of falling Chinese requirements. Chinese enterprises have signed up resource-extraction deals across Africa, but technocrats in Beijing have undoubtedly overestimated their country’s needs over the long-term. So look for the Chinese to begin dumping excess commodities on global markets— and reneging on their overly ambitious deals on the continent. China’s Africa trade numbers should fall accordingly. Second, American business is realizing that Africa is, as President Obama put it, “a continent full of promise and possibility.” After all, the president took about 500 business figures with him to Africa, home to six of the ten fastest-growing economies on the planet, including the top three: South Sudan, Libya, and Sierra Leone. Africa is, at least from the perspective of economic growth, the new East Asia. The president’s new $16 billion “Power Africa” initiative, announced in Cape Town on Sunday, and his “Trade Africa” plan, released on Monday in the Tanzanian city Dar es Salaam, mean that companies like General Electric and Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum will be doing much more business there. Third, Africa is reevaluating its new best friend. “So China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones,” wrote Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, in a much-discussed piece in the Financial Times in March. “This was also the essence of colonialism.” (Read more about this in “The New Imperialism,” March/April 2011.) Not surprisingly, Xi Jinping was on the defensive during his March trip to the continent and ended up admitting that Sanusi was on target. “China frankly faces up to the new circumstances and new problems in Sino-African relations,” he said in a speech in Dar es Salaam. “China has and will continue to work alongside African countries to take practical measures to appropriately solve problems in trade and economic cooperation so that African countries gain more from that cooperation.” Xi can deliver applause line likes this only so many times before African policymakers hold him to them. China has had a great run in Africa since the turn of the millennium, but now the economics of its relationship with the continent will begin to adjust.

China’s foreign aid isn’t motivated by desire to extract resources. Strange et al. 13 write19

However, many of these assertions are debated. The Chinese government flatly rejects the claim that its aid program is designed to secure access to other countries’ natural resources (PRC 2011; Provost 2011). Dreher and Fuchs (2012) develop and test an econometric model of Chinese aid allocation—drawing on novel sources of aid information from media reports, CIA intelligence reports, the World Food Programme, the China Commerce Yearbook, among others—and find no robust evidence that China’s aid allocation is driven by natural resource endowments. These results are helpful for separating speculation from actuality, but could be bolstered substantially by more comprehensive data on the geospatial distribution of Chinese development assistance. When analyzing Chinese outward investments in Africa rather than aid, the picture changes. Cheung et al. (2011) finds the expected positive effect of natural resource abundance on the distribution of FDI.

18 Gordon Chang (lawyer, author, TV pundit, best known for writing about China). “America versus China in Africa.” World Affairs. July 3rd, 2013. http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/gordon-g-chang/america-versus-china-africa 19 Austin Strange, Bradley Parks, Michael J. Tierney, Andreas Fuchs, Axel Dreher, and Vijaya Ramachandran. “China’s Development Finance to Africa: A Media-Based Approach to Data Collection.” Center for Global Development. Working Paper 323. April 2013. http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/chinese-development-finance-africa_0.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Prefer my evidence. The authors use AidData’s methodology which accounts for info that neg studies lack. Strange et al. 13 write20

China is of particular interest to researchers and practitioners because of the perceived scale and opaqueness of its activities in developing countries. Beijing discloses very little official information about its development finance activities, and there is a general lack of knowledge about the cross- national, sub-national, and sectoral distribution and impact of Chinese development finance. China’s overseas activities are closely scrutinized by international media, research institutions, and donor agencies, yet much of the conventional wisdom about Chinese development finance rests on untested assumptions, individual case studies, and incomplete data sources. The Chinese authorities have taken some modest steps to make their development finance activities more transparent in recent years.3 However, official sources do not cover most of Chinese development finance activities; nor do they consistently specify financial amounts or forms of support at the project level. To address this critical information gap, AidData launched an initiative in January 2012 to (a) systematize a media-based methodology for collecting project-level development finance information; and (b) create a comprehensive database of Chinese development finance flows to Africa from 2000-2011. In addition to providing aggregate statistics, AidData's database allows users to filter Chinese development finance by country, region, year, sector, dollar amount, financing instrument, project status, and a multitude of other variables. This paper is structured as follows. To begin this paper we provide a general overview of Chinese development finance, briefly surveying the history of Chinese aid activities as well as the institutional structure of contemporary Chinese development finance. We then present some of the most important policy debates surrounding China’s activities in Africa and outline why better data is urgently needed to inform scholars and policymakers. Next, we provide an overview of previous attempts to measure Chinese development finance and identify some of the key factors that have impeded efforts to create accurate, detailed, and comprehensive data. Subsequently, we introduce AidData’s media-based methodology and present the new database of Chinese overseas development finance activities. Specifically, we provide an overview of Chinese development finance to Africa as tracked by this new database. We also show that a media-based data collection methodology is a viable way to gather project-level development finance information from governments—such as China and Venezuela—that are unwilling to disclose their data. However, we are cognizant of the limitations imposed by this media-based approach and we discuss these weaknesses in the concluding section of the paper.

20 Austin Strange, Bradley Parks, Michael J. Tierney, Andreas Fuchs, Axel Dreher, and Vijaya Ramachandran. “China’s Development Finance to Africa: A Media-Based Approach to Data Collection.” Center for Global Development. Working Paper 323. April 2013. http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/chinese-development-finance-africa_0.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Arctic DA

Arctic Drilling Good North Korea Alaskan natural gas extraction prevents supply shortfalls. Bailey 12 writes21

A new flurry of exploration activity in the Cook Inlet basin in recent years and reports of some possible new gas fields on the horizon would seem to bode well for the future of the utility natural gas supply situation in Southcentral Alaska. But, in the near term at least, the continuing decline of aging gas fields would appear to still present a significant cause for concern.¶ In 2010 Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska, or PRA, completed a study for Southcentral utilities Enstar Natural Gas Co., Chugach Electric Association and Municipal Light & Power, assessing what might be involved in maintaining adequate utility gas supplies from the Cook Inlet basin through to 2020. The study came to a similar conclusion to a 2009 study conducted by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources: Both studies found that without the drilling of more new gas wells, utility gas supplies would fall short of demand in 2013. Heading off that 2013 shortfall and keeping adequate gas flowing through utility pipelines until 2020 would require an accelerating rate of gas well drilling, with 185 new wells needed at a likely total cost somewhere in the range of $1.9 billion to $2.8 billion, the PRA study found.¶ New Update¶ PRA has now updated its 2010 study, retaining the original analysis of field decline rates and the original cost analysis, but plugging in the actual record of gas wells drilled and field upgrades done since the 2010 study was completed. The new results show that new wells and field upgrades have pushed the gas supply decline curve a little further into the future. But without some major new source of gas coming on line in the near future, supplies now seem set to fall below demand in 2014 or 2015, just a year or two later than the original study had forecast.¶ Natural gas is the primary source of energy for Southcentral Alaska residents, accounting for about 90 percent of power generation and most of the heating for the region’s buildings. In 2011 85 percent of that gas came from five long-established Cook Inlet gas fields, according to PRA’s updated analysis.¶ Enstar, Southcentral Alaska’s main gas utility, has seen a shortfall in its firm, contracted gas supplies since January 2011 and since then has depended on gas producers bidding on a day-to-day basis to deliver gas to fill that shortfall, especially during the winter. Recent data provided to Petroleum News by Enstar shows the gap in contracted supplies widening significantly in 2013 and continuing to grow thereafter.

Energy insecurity collapses Alaskan missile defense which is key against North Korea. Begich 9 writes22

Over the past six years, the military has run 34 hit-to-kill interceptor tests, almost all of them successful. Now, in the face of a belligerent North Korea and an increasingly isolated Iran, funding for the missile defense initiative has been slated to be cut by $1.4 billion. While the world is changing, America and our allies still need to be defended from these growing missile threats. Today, I'm very pleased to welcome a special guest to contribute to this important national conversation. Senator Mark Begich was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Alaska last November. Before that, having been born and raised in Anchorage, he served on the City Council of Anchorage; he served on numerous state committees and commissions; and he served most recently before his Senate service as mayor of Anchorage, which is Alaska's biggest city. He has been on the Board of Regents of the university. He knows the challenges facing Alaska very well. More important, he serves on very significant committees: Commerce, Science and Transportation, Veterans, and -- most important for today's discussion, not only for Alaska, but for the entire United States -- the Senate Armed Services committee. We are particularly pleased he could join us today because, as many of you know, right now, at this very moment on the Senate floor, the Defense Authorization bill is being debated. Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D., is President of The Heritage Foundation. The Honorable Mark Begich: I sit as a Democrat from Alaska on the Armed Services Committee. It's the first time anyone from Alaska has been on that committee since 1968. It's a very interesting time, and Alaska is a very different state. I was born and raised there, and I know. In my own caucus, first, they wonder why I'm here today talking to your group. They wondered, "Are you sure you have the right building?" I said, "Absolutely." But several other Democrats were actually very supportive of me coming over. I'm a Democrat that has a little different view. I come to the Senate with a pro-defense, pro-gun, pro-development, pro-privacy viewpoint. Alaskans are very libertarian in that area of privacy. We're very strong on defense. We just had a vote, as a matter of fact, on the Thune amendment, which was about concealed-carry laws for guns. It was interesting because when the bill first came out, about two or three months ago, I was presiding. Listening to Senator Thune talk about this new piece of legislation, I thought, I like that. So as he was finishing, I turned to the one of the pages. I said, "Have him come up here." He came up, and I said, "I want to cosponsor that legislation." And this week, when he was preparing to present it, he says, "I have a bipartisan support on this legislation." It was like 22 Republicans and me, so I felt I was carrying an incredible load on my back and on my shoulders, but I felt good. We just took the vote. It failed by just two votes. He had to get 60, and he got 58 in the final call. I forget the exact number of Democrats, but there were about 15. A lot of them are freshmen, new Democrats, and we come from a different perspective. In a lot of ways, it's not surprising to my Alaskan voters that I would be here today. I never turn down any group to speak in front of. I don't care if it's the Alaska Independence Party who wants to secede from the United States to the Alaska Center for the Environment to Gay Pride: You name it, I go, because what people get from me is pretty straight talk, and I like to hear what people's views are. It helps me develop who I am as a person. The Northern Perspective on National Defense Today I want to discuss national defense issues from a perspective you may not have heard often: the Northern Perspective. Those of us from Alaska truly view things a little differently. Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska; it's actually 43 percent of the state's population. On top of that, we're an international city. We can touch, within nine hours from Alaska, 90 percent of the industrialized world by air. We do business with Japan, Korea, China, Russia. Probably about every four or five weeks I would do interviews with international press corps that would come to Anchorage and talk about the strategic importance of Alaska, and especially Anchorage. Just to give you one other data point, Anchorage is the second or third -- it goes back and forth -- largest cargo hauler in the world. We move more cargo than almost everywhere else, except a couple of cities, in this world. So if you're shipping anything west of the Mississippi internationally, more than likely it's coming through Anchorage. UPS as well as FedEx's international headquarters are in our city. I say that because also, from a military perspective, they understand that strategic importance. When you think back to when Alaska was set up and originally purchased in 1867, the U.S. Army helped administer it, and then the next group about 10 years later was the Navy and the U.S. Revenue Service. We ended having the Coast Guard as one

21 Alan, Staff writer at Petroleum News, No respite ahead, PRA now projects Cook Inlet natural gas supply shortfall in 2014 or 2015, Vol. 17, No. 13, Week of March 25, 2012, http://www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/725487798.shtml 22 Mark, US Senator from Alaska, “Alaska's Strategic Role in the Defense of the United States and the Vital Role of Missile Defense”, 9/10, http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/alaskas-strategic-role-in-the-defense-of-the-united-states-and-the-vital- role-of-missile-defense Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

of our biggest components. As time progressed and the gold rush occurred and Alaska continued to move forward, we saw -- and it was General Billy Mitchell that understood -- the air strategic location of Alaska back in 1935 when air was just becoming more aggressively part of the equation. His famous quote was, "Alaska is the most strategic place in the world from a military standpoint." As you can imagine, with World War II and the buildup of Alaska's vital role, the nation's defense grew dramatically. The Alaska Highway was constructed by the military and military equipment. I don't know if anyone's ever subjected themselves to driving the Alaska Highway; this was a road that the military constructed in record time. The idea was to move goods into Alaska for a strategic location. It was built by the Army. Also, we had a unique group of individuals. They were Alaskan people, Eskimos, Alaska Territorial Guard, who were really our eyes and ears on the shores of Alaska for the United States. A very important group. There's not many left now. As a matter of fact, I'm battling right now in the Department of Defense budget to get a little clause taken care of. These are individuals, about 26 of them, who served this country for more than 20 years, and the Army will not pay them a pension. But they get Veterans Administration benefits. It's a small group that is 86 years old. They actually paid them for a short period of time; then they cut them off and told them they might have to repay it. I said, "What are you talking about? These individuals served our country. They were on the front lines. They volunteered to serve, and then they continued to serve in the military in other capacities for another 20-plus years." So we are aggressively working on that. Iraq and Afghanistan Alaska, again, as we move into where we are today, is very vital. We have 30,000 active duty members from all branches, from all our bases, from Elmendorf, Eielson, and Clear Air Force bases, as well as Forts Richardson, Wainwright, and Greely, which are our Army bases. These bases are home to the latest and greatest military equipment. The big debate yesterday was F-22s. We have F-22s. We have a whole complement of them, and we're very proud of the fact that we have them. We also have the C-17s. If you've ever been in one of those, it's an incredible aircraft, one that is making a big difference. We also have a Stryker brigade, the Army's model deployable brigade combat team, to fight the counterinsurgency, which is critical. Our Stryker brigade already has seen activity in Iraq, and another Alaska airborne brigade combat team has recently been deployed to Afghanistan. I'm sure you've seen the recent accounts of PFC Bowe Bergdahl, who is from Fort Richardson, originally from Idaho but stationed at Fort Richardson. Alaska also is the home to 75,000 veterans, the highest per capita in the nation, 11 percent of our population. I want to give you this background so you see the backdrop of what I deal with as a person who sits on the Armed Services Committee and is involved heavily in the issues that surround the military in Alaska, but also our country. Five us recently came back from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tom Carper (D- DE), Mark Udall (D-CO), Kay Hagan (D-NC), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) went on this trip, along with myself, to really understand what's going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We got there just as things started to move. We left one of the cities, and it was bombed the next day or so. We were there in the heightened area. But it was important to understand, because I wanted to know what makes sense, what do we need to do, especially as we deal with what affects our troops. Alaska has nearly 10,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. When you think of our state, a lot of people say it's just a small state up north. But if you think of the volume, we're the sixth among all states and territories in volume of personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trip was an eye-opener, to be very frank with you. It gave me a sense of where we need to be and how the counterinsurgency is working; but also, spending time in Pakistan was very important. We were there right when the shift was starting to occur, where the military in Pakistan was finally realizing they have to move their forces over to the border with Afghanistan to make some impact; otherwise they're going to be overrun. So for us, it's important; for this world, I think it's important. We want a stable government in Pakistan. We want to make sure that the Taliban does not take control of their government in any form or any way. We were there right when this was all starting to move and shift, so when you talk about being at the right place at the right time, this may have been yes on one day but no on the next, because you weren't sure what was going to happen next. Also, as we finished there, North Korea was getting active. We were travelling and then starting to get reports as we went with regard to North Korea and what's going on there. Alaska and Missile Defense As you know, in Fort Greely, we're very fortunate to have the ground missile defense system. Greely currently has capacity for 26 missile interceptors, maintained by members of the Alaskan National Guard. The interceptors can be launched to intercept an incoming enemy missile. It's hard to describe this to people who are not aware of it. It's a bullet hitting a bullet. That's the technology. It's an incredible technology that has developed over the last several years. One of the arguments early on was, it doesn't work. Well, that's why you're testing it. I could never understand that argument. As soon as you got it up and running, they said it doesn't work. No, you're testing it, you're improving it, you're advancing the technology. If you ask the military today, as we have done in the Armed Services Committee, about the missile defense system overall, it's 90 percent accuracy. That's not too bad, and it's because of robust testing and the issues that the military has been homing in on involving better technology. As you know, the President had proposed cuts to not only the ground base, but also some other programs within the missile defense system. The budget that's in front of us today has, on the ground missile defense system, the continuation to a certain extent of that program, but it also still has a termination of the Multi Kill Vehicle as well as the Airborne Laser Tail 2. This is mainly because in the eyes of the committee, as well as the individuals that were developing the systems, we were jumping to production, and they want to continue to focus on the experimental stage, which seems rational. But we have to be very careful that people don't just throw out the whole missile defense system because they think that's old technology and that's not where we are today. That's an incorrect view. The GMD system, as you know, is in Alaska and California, and it's supported by an array of radars deployed all around the world. It's an American-based defense system to protect our nation. It's the only operational missile defense system. The decision to reduce the total number of deployed operational interceptors from 44 to 30 was the President's proposal. The investment strategy may have changed, but the threat clearly hasn't. Consider the quantity of missile testing that North Korea has done since this budget proposal was presented by the Administration. North Korea has launched 16 ballistic missiles and conducted one underground test, as well as a multi-stage long-range missile. The latest launch on July 4 means that 70 percent of the missile tests that they have done since 1988 have occurred since April of this year. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I'm not sure I like that coincidence. As they do these tests, they're perfecting their technology, but they're also showing their wares. First, they want to improve their technology. Second, they want other countries to see what they have, because they're in the business of selling too. That's what they do. That's part of their hard cash economy. So it's not just about North Korea and what they might do; it's what North Korea will do and who they will sell it to. We have to keep that all in perspective. Robust Testing and the Long-Term View Fort Greely is the home of most of our Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Interceptors. Alaska soon will be the home of the Sea- Based X-Band Radar, which is currently going through some testing and will be located in Adak. Along with that, the Kodiak, Alaska, launch is important because it's also a launch facility for testing to replicate enemy threats and launches. This is in Alaska. The good news on this front is that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made it very clear that he wants robust testing, and, again, we're very supportive of that. We think that's important. If you don't have robust testing, you cannot perfect the technology. In the weeks since the announcement to reduce the number of Alaska-based interceptors by the Administration, the Missile Defense Agency has had to do some fast analysis. Part of the problem is deteriorating conditions for what's called Missile Field 1. In Alaska, you have Missile Field 1; then you have completed Missile Field 3, and then Missile Field 2 that we're now doing. What they quickly found as we were going through this discussion in our committee was that Missile Field 1, which was originally six silos for the interceptors, was designed to be a test facility and was put together very quickly. Because of that, it has leaking antifreeze, has mold contamination, outdated copper pipes that are freezing and thawing, and a variety of other things which, as you can imagine, for a missile silo are not good to have. We learned this through the discussion of the committee, which was not public until we brought it out. And what we found was, even under the robust plan as they claim they had in the Administration, what was about to happen was that they were going to have less capacity because the first six silos are inadequate and are deteriorating. It was important for us to make that point. Also, the plan for Missile Field 2 is to stop the construction, close it down, seal it up, move on. We debate a lot about cost overruns, expensive things we're doing. The problem with that is, why would you take all the work that's being done there, shift it out of there, all the people and equipment, and then, now that we've got to replace the six that are deteriorating, bring them all back and do the next six or seven? What we argued for in committee, and were successful in Missile Field 2, was to make sure that the next seven silos be finished. So, as they figure out how to decommission the first six, there's seven silos to move forward until they finish their long-term planning in regards to the Defense Review as well as the Ballistic Missile Defense Review. Our view was, why would you make a decision when you don't have a plan yet of what you want to do with ballistic missile defense systems? The argument was received in a positive way by the committee. It worked, and they were unanimous in the final outcome. Also, we made sure to ensure that Congress has all the information available at the time of the budget submission in the future, which is critical because we did not have it this time. I know how the system works; I used to be a manager as a mayor, and when you control the information, you deliver as you see fit. In this situation, we've made it very clear in Section 243 of the Defense Authorizing bill to provide future-year defense plans annually that provide a schedule and plans for testing, sustainment, development, and deployment of GMD. What we were working on when we were doing this budget was a 2010 kind of budget only. With missile defense, it's a long-term view you have to have. You have to see the whole picture, and we were only being delivered this short- term picture. When we started asking questions about 2011, 2012, 2013, that's when we started to learn about Field 1 and what was happening with that. They had no plan yet to deal with that, so we had to help develop it through the process. This will make it clear that they must work through this process with us and show us the long-term picture. Energy Independence and National Security Finally, the whole issue of energy independence is critical if we are to have more flexibility in our national defense strategies and in our world strategies when it comes to international affairs. What I'm finding is that oil and gas issues are not necessarily high on the list of a lot of folks in the Democratic caucus. Now, I said that six months ago; today, it's a little different. We have more Democratic Senators coming from Western states now: Montana, the Dakotas, Colorado, New Mexico, Alaska -- what I call the Rocky Mountain Western states. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Means North Korea will blackmail the US--causes war. Huessy 9 writes23 North Korea now lags behind Iran in domestic rocket capabilities. Its last test of a long-range rocket only successfully completed two stages. If the third stage were to work, Pyongyang could land a 300 to 500 kilogram warhead on the United States. And while the West might experience relief over these apparent failures, it should be noted that Iranian technicians have been identified at North Korean launch facilities, marking a strong symbiotic relationship and the potential for technical cooperation. The Russians and Chinese also assist both rocket programs.¶ In the case of Iran, current assessments indicate that the Mullahs are developing nuclear devices to fit onto its 2,000 to 2,400 kilometer range Shahab missiles. This is a development of the utmost significance. The Islamic Republic could fit a small nuclear device onto a short or medium range missile, and launch it from a freighter just 300 kilometers off the coast of North Carolina, for example. Indeed, as Investors Business Daily reports, "the Iranians have tested a sophisticated nuclear warhead design that lets them pack a nuclear warhead into a smaller package able to fit nicely on the Shahab-3 and other Iranian missiles."¶ Analysts are also concerned about the threat of an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack. Such an attack would involve detonating a nuclear device 20 to 70 miles above a major metropolitan area. The blast would destroy every computer and electronic device within sight of the blast. This would destroy refrigerators, cars, phones, and more. It would, in effect, set the city back more than one hundred years, technologically speaking, and effectively destroy its economy. The ripple effect of just one EMP attack, both through economic and technological mayhem, could cripple the rest of the country.¶ The conventional wisdom is that Iran does not have the technology to launch an EMP attack on the U.S. However, the EMP Commission, chartered by Congress earlier this decade, judged that such an attack was very possible. Indeed, Iran tested a Scud-type missile off of a barge in the Caspian Sea in the mid 1990s. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) also conducted a test off the coast of Hawaii in recent years to prove to a skeptical intelligence community that it could be done. Even as far back as 1998, the Commission on Ballistic Missile Threats to the United States concluded that an EMP type attack ranked among the more likely missile threats to the United States.¶ Defending Against the Threat¶ While the U.S. currently has the technological capability to protect our costal regions from shorter-range attacks, such as from a freighter, to do so would require many more platforms. Systems such as the Aegis, the THAAD, and Patriot have proven to be effective in this capacity. But our current inventory needs to be expanded, as sufficient deployments around the country would deprive other regions from protection. Enhancement of the long-range interceptors deployed in Alaska and California must also be part of any defense package that seeks to deal with this threat, since an EMP threat can come from Scuds or ICBMs. As such, the U.S. Congress and the Administration should accelerate the acquisition and deployment of additional missile defense systems, as part of a global and layered capability to protect the U.S. and its allies.¶ In the absence of such defenses, North Korea and Iran or even Russia and China, will find it easier to blackmail, coerce, or bully the U.S. or its allies. U.S. military power is not the reason we are being threatened by the likes of Pyongyang and Tehran. It is that their terrorist and hegemonic goals can only succeed if American power is overcome. As Jeffrey Kuhner, President of the Edmund Burke Institute, wrote in The Washington Times:¶ Moscow and Peking have not abandoned their rivalry with the West… they are part of an alliance that aims to curtail and undermine American power. They have provided… support to Stalinist North Korea… They have sold vital missile and nuclear technology to Iran's apocalyptic mullahs. The are constantly obstructing the global war against terror."¶ Responding to the Critics¶ It is remarkable that after nearly half a century, even as the threats have gathered, critics of missile defense continue to oppose its deployment. They are wedded to the ambiguous strategy of "engagement and negotiations" with our enemies, primarily because they view U.S. policies as the root of the problem—most prominently represented by our liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq. In their view, if the United States is coerced into "staying at home," all the better.¶ The consequences of such a policy are grave. With no missile defenses for the U.S. homeland, we can be blackmailed successfully in any confrontation with a state that has long-range missiles in its possession. For example, we might be powerless to confront North Korea if it chose to resort to aggression against South Korea.¶ How should the U.S. prepare for this scenario? Taking no precautions will almost certainly embolden an aggressive actor like North Korea. But, a preemptive attack is also fraught with danger. Such an attack could leave Los Angeles and Pyongyang in ashes.¶ The answer lies in the deployment of effective missile defenses in any theater. Effective missile defenses give the President and the Pentagon the ability to strike launch sites in North Korea, for example, without necessarily sparking a wider conflict . More to the point, such defenses could also intercept North Korean rockets against our forces in the South China Sea, the Sea of Japan, South Korea, and Japan, for example.

23 Peter Huessy 9, Senior Defense Consultant Associate at the National Defense University Foundation (NDUF) and President of GeoStrategic Analysis, “Missile Defense in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation”, inFocus, http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1527/missile-defense-nuclear-proliferation Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Korean war goes nuclear, spills over globally--risk of miscalc is high and this time is different. Metz 13 writes24

Today, North Korea is the most dangerous country on earth and the greatest threat to U.S. security. For years, the bizarre regime in Pyongyang has issued an unending stream of claims that a U.S. and South Korean invasion is imminent, while declaring that it will defeat this offensive just as -- according to official propaganda -- it overcame the unprovoked American attack in 1950. Often the press releases from the official North Korean news agency are absurdly funny, and American policymakers tend to ignore them as a result. Continuing to do so, though, could be dangerous as events and rhetoric turn even more ominous. ¶ In response to North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test, the U.N. Security Council recently tightened existing sanctions against Pyongyang. Even China, North Korea's long-standing benefactor and protector, went along. Convulsed by anger, Pyongyang then threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States and South Korea, abrogated the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and cut off the North-South hotline installed in 1971 to help avoid an escalation of tensions between the two neighbors. A spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry asserted that a second Korean War is unavoidable. He might be right; for the first time, an official statement from the North Korean government may prove true. ¶ No American leader wants another war in Korea. The problem is that the North Koreans make so many threatening and bizarre official statements and sustain such a high level of military readiness that American policymakers might fail to recognize the signs of impending attack. After all, every recent U.S. war began with miscalculation; American policymakers misunderstood the intent of their opponents, who in turn underestimated American determination. The conflict with North Korea could repeat this pattern. ¶ Since the regime of Kim Jong Un has continued its predecessors’ tradition of responding hysterically to every action and statement it doesn't like, it's hard to assess exactly what might push Pyongyang over the edge and cause it to lash out. It could be something that the United States considers modest and reasonable, or it could be some sort of internal power struggle within the North Korean regime invisible to the outside world. While we cannot know whether the recent round of threats from Pyongyang is serious or simply more of the same old lathering, it would be prudent to think the unthinkable and reason through what a war instigated by a fearful and delusional North Korean regime might mean for U.S. security. ¶ The second Korean War could begin with missile strikes against South Korean, Japanese or U.S. targets, or with a combination of missile strikes and a major conventional invasion of the South -- something North Korea has prepared for many decades. Early attacks might include nuclear weapons, but even if they didn't, the United States would probably move quickly to destroy any existing North Korean nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. ¶ The war itself would be extremely costly and probably long. North Korea is the most militarized society on earth. Its armed forces are backward but huge. It's hard to tell whether the North Korean people, having been fed a steady diet of propaganda based on adulation of the Kim regime, would resist U.S. and South Korean forces that entered the North or be thankful for relief from their brutally parasitic rulers. As the conflict in Iraq showed, the United States and its allies should prepare for widespread, protracted resistance even while hoping it doesn't occur. Extended guerrilla operations and insurgency could potentially last for years following the defeat of North Korea's conventional military. North Korea would need massive relief, as would South Korea and Japan if Pyongyang used nuclear weapons. Stabilizing North Korea and developing an effective and peaceful regime would require a lengthy occupation, whether U.S.-dominated or with the United States as a major contributor. ¶ The second Korean War would force military mobilization in the United States. This would initially involve the military's existing reserve component, but it would probably ultimately require a major expansion of the U.S. military and hence a draft. The military's training infrastructure and the defense industrial base would have to grow. This would be a body blow to efforts to cut government spending in the United States and postpone serious deficit reduction for some time, even if Washington increased taxes to help fund the war. Moreover, a second Korean conflict would shock the global economy and potentially have destabilizing effects outside Northeast Asia. ¶ Eventually, though, the United States and its allies would defeat the North Korean military. At that point it would be impossible for the United States to simply re-establish the status quo ante bellum as it did after the first Korean War. The Kim regime is too unpredictable, desperate and dangerous to tolerate. Hence regime change and a permanent ending to the threat from North Korea would have to be America's strategic objective. ¶ China would pose the most pressing and serious challenge to such a transformation of North Korea. After all, Beijing's intervention saved North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung after he invaded South Korea in the 1950s, and Chinese assistance has kept the subsequent members of the Kim family dictatorship in power. Since the second Korean War would invariably begin like the first one -- with North Korean aggression -- hopefully China has matured enough as a great power to allow the world to remove its dangerous allies this time. If the war began with out-of-the-blue North Korean missile strikes, China could conceivably even contribute to a multinational operation to remove the Kim regime. ¶ Still, China would vehemently oppose a long-term U.S. military presence in North Korea or a unified Korea allied with the United States. One way around this might be a grand bargain leaving a unified but neutral Korea. However appealing this might be, Korea might hesitate to adopt neutrality as it sits just across the Yalu River from a China that tends to claim all territory that it controlled at any point in its history. ¶ If the aftermath of the second Korean War is not handled adroitly, the result could easily be heightened hostility between the United States and China, perhaps even a new cold war. After all, history shows that deep economic connections do not automatically prevent nations from hostility and war -- in 1914 Germany was heavily involved in the Russian economy and had extensive trade and financial ties with France and Great Britain. It is not inconceivable then, that after the second Korean War, U.S.-China relations would be antagonistic and hostile at the same time that the two continued mutual trade and investment. Stranger things have happened in statecraft.

24 Steven Metz 3-13, Chairman of the Regional Strategy and Planning Department and Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute, 3/13/13, “Strategic Horizons: Thinking the Unthinkable on a Second Korean War,” http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12786/strategic-horizons-thinking-the-unthinkable-on-a-second-korean-war Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Arctic drilling by the US is key to the West Coast economy which is key to the US economy. Holt 12 writes25

The United States took a giant step toward securing its energy future this month with the initiation of drilling exploratory wells in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. The development of these wells marks the first time in nearly two decades that multiple oil drilling rigs have been working off Alaska’s shore simultaneously. While this may seem like a minor development, it has the potential to profoundly change America’s economic and energy future. This begs the question, how can two oil wells have such a significant impact on the energy future of the United States? The answer lies in the abundance of the resources being tapped. Federal officials estimate the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could contain upward of 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Put another way, that’s the largest untapped source of proven oil reserves in North America. For the West Coast in particular, these resources represent a tremendous economic opportunity that could provide the foundation for the region’s future. After all, development is expected to provide more than 50,000 jobs nationwide, significant state and local government revenues, and a more affordable and reliable source of energy for the entire West Coast, one of the largest economic regions of the United States. A more affordable source of energy is critical to the western United States’ long-term success, as the region currently must import more than 1 million barrels of oil a day to meet its energy needs. After being self-sufficient in the 1980s, the West Coast has quadrupled its reliance on OPEC over the past two decades. The production of oil and gas resources in Alaska’s North Slope is also critical for the longevity of one of our nation’s most critical infrastructure assets, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. With Prudhoe Bay production declines, the volume of oil transported through the pipeline has dropped to an average of 595,000 barrels a day. Operating at such a low capacity could force the pipeline to close because of weather challenges. If this happens, the main source of domestic crude oil to Western refineries would be sacrificed, and the West Coast’s economy would suffer. The road that led to this situation was paved with a combination of prohibitive regulations, declining production and the lack of a national energy plan. This didn’t begin with the current president, but he hasn’t helped much, either. Since President Obama took office in 2009, oil production on federal lands has reached its lowest point in nearly a decade. Last year alone, production on federal lands dropped 13 percent, and federal offshore production dropped by 17 percent. While the president approved the operations in the Arctic, it took him four years to do so, and final approvals came only after strident objections of opponents that the administration failed to rein in. These opponents would like us to believe it’s too risky to safely explore the Arctic. They argue we should forget about these resources that are nearly a quarter of our known, technically recoverable Outer Continental Shelf reserves. While opponents are concerned with the safety of the Arctic’s sensitive ecosystem, it is unfair to assume the oil and gas industry does not share the same sentiment. For companies such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the launch of this project is the culmination of more than $5 billion in investments and six years of preparation, which have enabled the project to receive approval from the Environmental Protection Agency as well as multiple other federal agencies with oversight of the operations. Commandant of the Coast Guard Adm. Robert J. Papp Jr. has stated his belief that both the industry and the Coast Guard are ready for the task. “[Shell] truly did their homework, I believe,” Adm. Papp said, “and I think they are going to be well prepared.” Other Arctic nations — including Canada, Russia, Norway and Greenland — already have established or will soon establish Arctic offshore oil and gas programs. In fact, the United States is one of the last nations to tap into the resources off our own coastline. Doing so is a critical part of any “all of the above” energy portfolio. Technological advances have led to the shale revolution, and they are enabling Arctic exploration as well. As a world leader, the United States needs to seize this opportunity to raise the bar for responsible energy production that will propel our economy forward. We can no longer afford to block access to our natural resources, placing our own economy and quality of life at risk. In the case of Arctic oil and gas programs, the economic health of the entire West Coast of the United States is at stake — which, in California, includes the world’s ninth-largest economy.

25 David Holt, President of Consumer Energy Alliance, “HOLT: Arctic oil and gas exploration could revitalize West Coast”, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/23/arctic-oil-and-gas-exploration-could-revitalize-we/, October 23, 2012 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

US economic decline causes extinction and turns Russian militarism. Friedberg and Schonfeld 8 writes26 With the global financial system in serious trouble, is America's geostrategic dominance likely to diminish? If so, what would that mean? One immediate implication of the crisis that began on Wall Street and spread across the world is that the primary instruments of U.S. foreign policy will be crimped. The next president will face an entirely new and adverse fiscal position. Estimates of this year's federal budget deficit already show that it has jumped $237 billion from last year, to $407 billion. With families and businesses hurting, there will be calls for various and expensive domestic relief programs. In the face of this onrushing river of red ink, both Barack Obama and John McCain have been reluctant to lay out what portions of their programmatic wish list they might defer or delete. Only Joe Biden has suggested a possible reduction -- foreign aid. This would be one of the few popular cuts, but in budgetary terms it is a mere grain of sand. Still, Sen. Biden's comment hints at where we may be headed: toward a major reduction in America's world role , and perhaps even a new era of financially-induced isolationism. Pressures to cut defense spending, and to dodge the cost of waging two wars, already intense before this crisis, are likely to mount. Despite the success of the surge, the war in Iraq remains deeply unpopular. Precipitous withdrawal -- attractive to a sizable swath of the electorate before the financial implosion -- might well become even more popular with annual war bills running in the hundreds of billions. Protectionist sentiments are sure to grow stronger as jobs disappear in the coming slowdown. Even before our current woes, calls to save jobs by restricting imports had begun to gather support among many Democrats and some Republicans. In a prolonged recession, gale-force winds of protectionism will blow. Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar- denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the future? Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external adventures. As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are struggling to deal with decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism, Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power. What does this all mean? There is no substitute for America on the world stage. The choice we have before us is between the potentially disastrous effects of disengagement and the stiff price tag of continued American leadership.

26 Aaron Friedberg (Professor of Politics and IR at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School) and Gabriel Schonfeld (senior editor of Commentary and a visiting scholar at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton). “The Dangers of a Diminished America.” WSJ. August 21st, 2008. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Arctic War Defense

No risk of Arctic war. Economist 12 writes27 During the cold war the Arctic bristled with Soviet submarines and American bombers operating from airbases in Iceland and Greenland. The talk of Arctic security risks sometimes betrays a certain nostalgia for that period. Some people also worry about Arctic countries militarising the north. Canada conducted its biggest-ever military exercise in the north, involving 1,200 troops, in the Arctic last year. Yet the risks of Arctic conflict have been exaggerated. Most of the Arctic is clearly assigned to individual countries. According to a Danish estimate, 95% of Arctic mineral resources are within agreed national boundaries. The biggest of the half-dozen remaining territorial disputes is between the United States and Canada, over whether the north-west passage is in international or Canadian waters, hardly a casus belli. Far from violent, the development of the Arctic is likely to be uncommonly harmonious, for three related reasons. One is the profit motive. The five Arctic littoral countries, Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway, would sooner develop the resources they have than argue over those they do not have. A sign of this was an agreement between Russia and Norway last year to fix their maritime border in the Barents Sea, ending a decades-long dispute. The border area is probably rich in oil; both countries are now racing to get exploration started. Another spur to Arctic co-operation is the high cost of operating in the region. This is behind the Arctic Council's first binding agreement, signed last year, to co-ordinate search-and-rescue efforts. Rival oil companies are also working together, on scientific research and mapping as well as on formal joint ventures. The third reason for peace is equally important: a strong reluctance among Arctic countries to give outsiders any excuse to intervene in the region's affairs. An illustration is the stated willingness of all concerned to settle their biggest potential dispute, over their maritime frontiers, according to the international Law of the Sea (LOS). Even the United States accepts this, despite its dislike for treaties—though it has still not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an anomaly many of its leaders are keen to end.

Zero chance of Arctic war—experts Mahony 13 writes28

The Arctic has become a new frontier in international relations, but fear of potential conflict in the resource-rich region is overblown, say experts. For long a mystery because of its general impenetrability, melting ice caps are revealing more and more of the Arctic region to scientists, researchers and industry. Climate change experts can take a more precise look at a what global warming is doing to the planet, shipping trade routes once considered unthinkable are now possible, and governments and businesses are in thrall to the potential exploitation of coal, iron, rare earths and oil. The interest is reflected in the growing list of those wanting to have a foot in the Arctic council, a forum of eight countries with territory in the polar region. While the US, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and Canada form the council, the EU commission, China, India, South Korea and Japan have all expressed an interest in having a permanent observer status. "The Arctic has become a new meeting place for America, Europe and the Asia Pacific," says Damien Degeorges, founder of the Arctic Policy and Economic Forum. During a recent conference on Arctic shipping routes in the European Parliament, Degeorges noted that "China has been the most active by far in the last years." He points to its red-carpet treatment of politicians from Greenland, a territory that recently got full control over its wealth of natural resources. Bejing also cosied up to Iceland after the island's financial meltdown. The two undertook a joint expedition to the North Pole and the Chinese have the largest foreign embassy in Reykjavik. Meanwhile, South Korea's president visited Greenland last year and shipping hubs like Singapore are holding Arctic conferences. The interest is being spurred by melting icebergs. Last year saw a record low of multi-year ice - permanent ice - in the polar sea. This means greater shipping and mineral exploitation potential. There were 37 transits of the North East Passage (NEP), running from the Atlantic to the Pacific along the top of Russia, in 2011. This rose to 47 in 2012. For a ship travelling from the Netherlands to China, the route around 40 percent shorter than using the traditional Suez Canal. A huge saving for China, where 50 percent of its GDP is connected to shipping. Russia is also keen to exploit the route as the rise in temperatures is melting the permafrost in its northern territory, playing havoc with its roads and railways. According to Jan Fritz Hansen, deputy director of the Danish shipowners’ association, the real breakthrough will come when there is a cross polar route. At the moment there are are two options - the North East Passge for which Russia asks high fees for transiting ships - or the much-less developed North West Passage along Canada. His chief concern is that "trade up there is free. We don't want protectionism. Everyone should be allowed to compete up there." And he believes the biggest story of the Arctic is not how it is traversed but what will be taken out of it. According to the US Geological Survey (2009), the Arctic holds 13 percent of undiscovered oil and 30 percent of undiscovered gas supplies. Greenland is already at the centre of political tussle between the EU and China over future exploitation of its rare earths - used in a range of technologies such as hybrid cars or smart phones. "The biggest adventure will be the Arctic destination. There is a lot of valuable goods that should be taken out of nature up there," he said. This resource potential - although tempered by the fact that much of it is not economically viable to exploit - has led to fears that the Arctic region is ripe for conflict. But this is nonsense, says Nil Wang, a former Danish admiral and Arctic expert. Most resources have an owner "There is a general public perception that the Arctic region holds great potential for conflict because it is an ungoverned region where all these resources are waiting to be picked up by the one who gets there first. That is completely false," he said. He notes that it is an "extremely well-regulated region," with international rules saying that coastal states have territorial jurisdiction up to 12 nautical miles off their coast. On top of that is a further 200 nautical miles of exclusive economic zone "where you own every value in the water and under the seabed." "Up to 97 percent of energy resources is actually belonging to someone already," says Wang. He suggest the actors in the region all want to create a business environment, which requires stable politics and security.

27 Economist 6-16-2012 “Too much to fight over”, http://www.economist.com/node/21556797 28 Honor, EU Observer, "Fear of Arctic conflict are 'overblown'", 19 March 2013, euobserver.com/foreign/119479 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Will to Power NC

1. No link. The aff doesn’t have to defend zero RE, and none of his evidence justifies doing as much resource extraction as possible.

2. TURN – Nietzsche’s critique of morality entails prioritizing EP. Drenthen 99 writes29 However, I have shown that this does not necessarily mean that Nietzsche is irrelevant for environmental ethics. I have argued that Nietzsche’s philosophy is relevant for us today, because he points to a key characteristic of our current understanding of the world: the tension between the need for a normative concept of nature on the one hand, and our being conscious of the problematic nature of any attempt to develop such a concept for moral orientation on the other. Nietzsche’s philosophy elaborates on the problems connected with such an ambivalent understanding of the world. By doing so, he might make us more susceptible to the underlying fundamental ethical problems that we face today. As a key concept in Nietzsche’s critique of morality, ‘nature’ functions as a counterpoint for any moral interpretation of nature. Nietzsche not only criticizes the dominant anthropocentric attitude towards nature, but all appropriations of nature. At the same time he urges us to make better interpretations of what nature really is. According to Nietzsche, we cannot get rid of nature. Although we are inevitably trying to master nature, we remain aware of the fact that the world is not of our making. We find ourselves already ‘in context’, we live in a world that is already there. This otherness of nature seems to provoke a sense of awe. Many poets and philosophers have tried to articulate this sense, and have tried to show that nature is of value, simply because it exists. For Nietzsche also, nature is not just the surplus of each interpretation. Nature is also characterized with positive attributes such as creativity, greatness, forcefulness, independence, and necessity. Nietzsche exhorts us, though, to be cautious in using such positive attributions, as they can be nothing more than attempts to articulate the moral meaning nature has for us. Nietzsche points out that the conflict between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophy is not just an academic misunderstanding, but can itself be regarded as a symptom of a crisis in our current relationship with nature. He urges us to go beyond the debate between relativistic constructivism and moralistic value realism, and try and find new modes of thinking of nature that more adequately reflect the ambivalent status of nature in our time. His philosophy makes us susceptible for the risk of repeating the hubris against nature in our attempts to identify the moral meaning of nature in itself. At the same time, it challenges us to sincerely, self-critically and sensitively assess our moral experiences of nature.

3. The constitutive view of agency makes no sense. Railton 97 writes30 This brings us to the second danger, the danger of pulling the claws of criticism.24 Assume, for example, that the connection between taking oneself to have an end and according that end deliberative weight is a substantively necessary, non-analytic connection of the same modality as the connection between being gold and having atomic number 79. What would we then be able to say by way of criticism of an agent who refused to give deliberative weight to his own acknowledged end E? Would he be “necessarily deliberatively defective” or perhaps “self-defeatingly irrational”? If the constitutive argument is right, we cannot even raise the question! To fail to take oneself as according E deliberative weight is to fail to acknowledge E as an end. But then the agent cannot merit the label ‘self-defeating’ or ‘irrational’ with respect to E. An analogy: to discover that the metal in the sample tray on one’s laboratory bench has atomic number 82 is not to discover that it is “defective gold,” but rather that it is not gold at all. A similar problem confronts all constitutive arguments. Suppose, for example, that someone has a propositional attitude toward p that involves, among other things, her representing p as true. Thus far, this attitude is a candidate for belief. But suppose further that she sees no relevance to this attitude of admitted evidence against p, even evidence she recognizes to be conclusive. When challenged, she is not defensive and produces no elaborate rationale, but simply points out that she is quite indifferent as to whether her attitude toward p is responsive to the truth of p.

29 Martin Drenthen (Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, at the Faculty of Science of Radboud University). “The Paradox of Environmental Ethics: Nietzsche’s View of Nature and the Wild.” Environmental Ethics. Vol 21, No. 2. 1999. http://home.xmsnet.nl/drenthen/publicaties/paradoxenvethics.PDF 30 Peter Railton (John Stephenson Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1980). “On the Hypothetical and Non-Hypothetical in Reasoning about Belief and Action.” Ethics and Practical Reason, Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

4. TURN – The will to power requires that we stay true to the Earth, prioritizing EP.

Freeman 11 writes31

With the temperature rising and icecaps melting and storms raging in seemingly unprecedented force, the signs of a potentially catastrophic global climate change seem everyday more obvious and impossible to discount. It is in the context of such times that it is perhaps all the more relevant that we come here to discuss the import of Nietzsche's thought for ecocritism. How convincing are recent "green" readings of Nietzsche? Nietzsche's project of a "revaluation of all values" involved an overturning or overcoming of the other-worldly values that have shaped the Western tradition since Plato, most dramatically expressed in the exhortation of Nietzsche's Zarathustra to '" stay true to the earth and do not believe those who talk of overearthly hopes'" (Z 'Prologue', 3). One of the reasons Nietzsche brings back Zarathustra as his literary mouthpiece is that the historical Persian prophet was the one who first spoke of a judgment day and an eternal other-worldly reward. Thus Nietzsche brings Zarathustra back to atone for his mistakes and issue what might perhaps be taken as a call for an awakening of an ecological consciousness. Graham Parkes certainly understands it this way arguing that Nietzsche's 'philosophy of nature, his understanding of the natural world and human existence as interdependent processes and dynamic configurations of will to power, can contribute to grounding a realistic, global ecology that in its loyalty to the earth may be capable of saving it.'1 Nevertheless, despite the "green" readings by contemporary Nietzsche scholars, Greg Garrard, in his indispensable introduction to the field of ecocriticism, concludes that though Nietzsche seeks a biocentric perspective like deep ecologists, he finds, unlike them, 'only nihilism in the process.'2 I wish here to merely suggest how Nietzsche's thought perhaps does not end in nihilism

5. Will to power means permissibility at best. Both EP and RE are actions and thus overcome resistance. Ignore permissibility because of moral uncertainty, that’s from the AC.

31 Tim Freeman (Professor of Philosophy at University of Hawaii at Hilo). “Nietzsche as Ecological Thinker.” Presented at 2011 Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. https://www.academia.edu/705207/_Nietzsche_as_Ecological_Thinker_ Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

6. TURN – The will to power is non-anthropocentric and interpretative, necessarily taking into account the value of nature. Storey 13 summarizes Parkes32

[Ellipses in original.] The pivotal concept in Nietzsche's later, positive view of nature is the will to power. As we saw in the previous chapter, there are three key aspects to it: its cosmic scope, its connection to interpretation, and its development along a continuum. In a sense, everything turns on whether will to power is interpreted anthropocentrically. As we saw, this is Heidegger's position: not that the will to power is merely a psychological principle, but that for Nietzsche, psychology becomes metaphysics through the projection of will onto all beings. But Parkes makes a strong case that Nietzsche's ultimate meaning for the concept is cosmic in scope. Discussing Nietzsche's “thought experiment of extrapolating from what he know immediately and intimately...to the rest of life and to 'the so-called mechanistic (or material) world,” Parkes insists that this is by no means an instance of anthropocentrism, since Nietzsche has just desubstantialized the soul into a configuration of forces...shown the human “I” to be a fiction generated by the grammatical habit of positing a doer for every doing, and demonstrated 'will' to be a complex function of forces issuing from a social structure of multiple 'souls' deep within the body. Far from being the 'will power' exerted by the human ego, the will of will to power is...a cosmic force. In other words, the problem of “access” to the nonhuman realm is canceled when the notion of a substantial self or soul is seen through; that is what permits Nietzsche's “extrapolation.” Will to power is an inherently interpretative force. This is usually taken in a strictly human sense, that given we are the only beings with language and consciousness, we are the only beings that interpret, that tells stories and create culture and give accounts of the way things are. However, Parkes suggests that If Nietzsche's suggestion that 'all existence is essentially an interpreting existence' strikes us as strange, this is because we are so accustomed to the Cartesian dichotomy between the animate and inanimate (with only the human animate, res cogitans, being capable of interpreting). Less anthropocentric philosophies like Daoism and Mahayana Buddhism assume a continuum between natural and human, with each particular on the continuum construing the world from its own perspective. Parkes acutely explains how the failure to see this interpretive aspect undermines previous efforts in seeing Nietzsche as an environmental thinker: Neither Hallman nor Acampora seems to appreciate this interpretive dimension of the will to power, Hallman being too focused on 'the interrelated dimension of all things' and Acampora overemphasizing 'exploitation.' The latter rightly emphasizes the importance in Nietzsche of the order of rank and pathos of distance—but these are ideas that he applies to hierarchy among human beings and not to their putative superiority over natural beings. Nietzsche's perspective is best illustrated (if not most articulated) in Zarathustra. As Parkes explains, Zarathustra's ideal is to “let each particular thing generate its own horizons, arising and perishing just as it does. In terms of environmental ethics, to experience in this way allows one to appreciate the intrinsic value of the natural world absolutely.” But what is the nature of this interpretive world-projection? Interpretation and projection seem to imply a unidirectional imposition of the subject on the objective world. Parkes clarifies this by explaining just what it is the drives interpret: “There is some resistance there, something to 'push back' and set limits on how the world can be construed.... What pushes back...as our drives interpretively project a world, is will in the form of other drives—not only the drives of our fellow human beings, but also those that animate animals, plants, and other natural phenomena.” Perspectives, in other words, are always perspectives on other perspectives. A perspective is not a windowless monad, but a finite clearing or opening within which the world manifests in a certain way, with some capacity for receptivity and response. At the human level, the higher or better interpretation will be the one that respects and incorporates as many “resistances” and “limits”--as many perspectives--as possible. All told, Parkes classifies Nietzsche as an “ecocentrist,” the view that the main object of ethical concern should be biotic communities (wholes) rather than individual organisms (parts).

32 David Storey (member of the Philosophy faculty at Boston College). “Nietzsche and Ecology Revisited: The Biological Basis of Value.” Environmental Ethics. 2013. https://www.academia.edu/1816642/_Nietzsche_and_Ecology_Revisited_The_Biological_Basis_of_Value_forthcoming_in_Envi ronmental_Ethics_pending_revisions_ Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

7. Constitutive features of action can’t be normative. Enoch 11 writes33

If it can be defended, then, constitutivism promises to yield significant payoffs. But constitutivism seems to be subject to a powerful objection. For agents need not care about their qualifications as agents, or whether some of their bodily movements count as actions. They can, it seems, be perfectly happy being shmagents – non-agent things that lack the thing purportedly constitutive of agency, but that are as similar to agents as is otherwise possible – or perhaps being something else altogether. If so, constitutivism cannot make good on its promises: For when Korsgaard replies to the agent who asks, say, "Why should I care about the hypothetical and categorical imperatives?" with "Well, otherwise you wouldn't even count as an agent, you wouldn't even be in the game of performing actions.", the skeptic can discard this reply with a simple "So-what?". What is it to her, as it were, if she qualifies as an agent or not? She would be analogous not to the chess-player who asks why she should play according to the rules, but to someone who enjoys the aesthetic qualities of (what we call) the chess board and pieces. If we tell this person that he must not move his king to a certain position because it's against the rules, and if he breaks them he won't count as playing chess, he can shrug us off with a simple "So-what?". He doesn’t care whether his manipulation of the chess pieces qualifies as chess-playing. And at this point the objectivity Velleman hopes for also collapses, because the practical reasons whose objectivity Velleman wants to secure will not reach the person who is happy being a shamgent-rather-than-an- agent, or perhaps something else entirely. The general point here is that the status of being constitutive of agency does not suffice for a normatively non-arbitrary status. Of course, if there were some independent reason to be an agent (for instance, rather than a shmagent), or to perform actions, this objection would go away. But the price would be too high, for such an independent reason – one not accounted for by the constitutivist story, but rather presupposed by it – would make it impossible for constitutivism to be the whole, or the most foundational, account of normativity, or to deliver on its promised payoffs.

8. TURN – Environmental protection overcomes the resistance of resource extraction companies to regulation. Outweighs neg offense. Maintaining the squo is a form of inaction which doesn’t proactively overcome resistance.

9. Extinction outweighs. It precludes all future self-overcoming.

10. Will to power isn’t constitutive of action. If I flip my pen, there’s no resistance overcame.

11. Devolves to util. The actor is the state, and only individuals have a will to power. Util is constitutive of governments, that’s Sunstein and Vermuele 5.

33 David Enoch. “Shmagency Revisited.” In M. Brady ed. New Waves in Metaethics, Palgrave Macmillan, 208–233. 2011. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Civil Wars Neg General Frontlines EP Good Prioritizing EP solves civil wars. UNEP 9 writes34 Since 1990 at least eighteen violent conflicts have been fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources. In fact, recent research suggests that over the last sixty years at least forty percent of all intrastate conflicts have a link to natural resources. Civil wars such as those in Liberia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo have centred on “high- value” resources like timber, diamonds, gold, minerals and oil. Other conflicts, including those in Darfur and the Middle East, have involved control of scarce resources such as fertile land and water. As the global population continues to rise, and the demand for resources continues to grow, there is significant potential for conflicts over natural resources to intensify in the coming decades. In addition, the potential consequences of climate change for water availability, food security, prevalence of disease, coastal boundaries, and population distribution may aggravate existing tensions and generate new conflicts. Environmental factors are rarely, if ever, the sole cause of violent conflict. Ethnicity, adverse economic conditions, low levels of international trade and conflict in neighbouring countries are all significant drivers of violence. However, the exploitation of natural resources and related environmental stresses can be implicated in all phases of the conflict cycle, from contributing to the outbreak and perpetuation of violence to undermining prospects for peace. In addition, the environment can itself fall victim to conflict, as direct and indirect environmental damage, coupled with the collapse of institutions, can lead to environmental risks that threaten people’s health, livelihoods and security. Because the way that natural resources and the environment are governed has a determining influence on peace and security, these issues can also contribute to a relapse into conflict if they are not properly managed in post-conflict situations. Indeed, preliminary findings from a retrospective analysis of intrastate conflicts over the past sixty years indicate that conflicts associated with natural resources are twice as likely to relapse into conflict in the first five years. Nevertheless, fewer than a quarter of peace negotiations aiming to resolve conflicts linked to natural resources have addressed resource management mechanisms. The recognition that environmental issues can contribute to violent conflict underscores their potential significance as pathways for cooperation, transformation and the consolidation of peace in war-torn societies. Natural resources and the environment can contribute to peacebuilding through economic development and the generation of employment, while cooperation over the management of shared natural resources provides new opportunities for peacebuilding. These factors, however, must be taken into consideration from the outset. Indeed, deferred action or poor choices made early on are easily “locked in,” establishing unsustainable trajectories of recovery that can undermine the fragile foundations of peace. Integrating environment and natural resources into peacebuilding is no longer an option – it is a security imperative. The establishment of the UN Peacebuilding Commission provides an important chance to address environmental risks and capitalize on potential opportunities in a more consistent and coherent way. In this context, UNEP recommends that the UN Peacebuilding Commission and the wider international community consider the following key recommendations for integrating environment and natural resource issues into peacebuilding interventions and conflict prevention: 1. Further develop UN capacities for early warning and early action: The UN system needs to strengthen its capacity to deliver early warning and early action in countries that are vulnerable to conflicts over natural resources and environmental issues. At the same time, the effective governance of natural resources and the environment should be viewed as an investment in conflict prevention. 2. Improve oversight and protection of natural resources during conflicts: The international community needs to increase oversight of “high-value” resources in international trade in order to minimize the potential for these resources to finance conflict. International sanctions should be the primary instrument dedicated to stopping the trade in conflict resources and the UN should require Member States to act against sanctions violators. At the same time, new legal instruments are required to protect natural resources and environmental services during violent conflict. 3. Address natural resources and the environment as part of the peacemaking and peacekeeping process: During peace mediation processes, wealth-sharing is one of the fundamental issues that can “make or break” a peace agreement. In most cases, this includes the sharing of natural resources, including minerals, timber, land and water. It is therefore critical that parties to a peace mediation process are given sufficient technical information and training to make informed decisions on the sustainable use of natural resources. Subsequent peacekeeping operations need to be aligned with national efforts to improve natural resource and environmental governance. 4. Include natural resources and environmental issues into integrated peacebuilding strategies: The UN often undertakes post- conflict operations with little or no prior knowledge of what natural resources exist in the affected country, or of what role they may have played in fuelling conflict. In many cases it is years into an intervention before the management of natural resources receives sufficient attention. A failure to respond to the environmental and natural resource needs of the population can complicate the task of fostering peace and even contribute to conflict relapse. 5. Carefully harness natural resources for economic recovery: Natural resources can only help strengthen the post-war economy and contribute to economic recovery if they are managed well. The international community should be prepared to help national authorities manage the extraction process and revenues in ways that do not increase risk of further conflict, or are unsustainable in the longer term. This must go hand in hand with ensuring accountability, transparency, and environmental sustainability in their management. 6. Capitalize on the potential for environmental cooperation to contribute to peacebuilding: Every state needs to use and protect vital natural resources such as forests, water, fertile land, energy and biodiversity. Environmental issues can thus serve as an effective platform or catalyst for enhancing dialogue, building confidence, exploiting shared interests and broadening cooperation between divided groups, as well as between states.

34 United Nations Environment Programme. “From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment.” 2009. http://www.unep.org/pdf/pcdmb_policy_01.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

RE Bad (General) Resource extraction causes civil wars. Empirics prove. WSM 8 writes35 Of all the factors contributing to world poverty, internal conflict has been enormously damaging to the development prospects of the poorest billion, the damage results from the conflicts themselves, as well as the many ways in which conflict exacerbates other factors. Again, most experts agree that war is both a cause and a symptom of extreme poverty. Most internal conflicts among LDCs are classified as resource conflicts – conflicts that arise over the control of natural resources. They can also be the result of ethnic and historical grievances, many of which are colonial legacies, such as the Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. Colonial powers often employed a divide and rule strategy, turning different indigenous ethnic groups against each other to prevent them from uniting against external rulers. These rivalries and hatreds outlasted the colonial era, and decades after independence, many LDCs are still reeling from the fragmentation of their societies. The World Bank has estimated that LDCs are 15 times more likely to experience internal conflict than developed countries. According to an analysis by Paul Collier, of the 58 countries that are home to the poorest billion, a full 73% have experienced a civil war; the occurrence of one civil war is seen to double the risk for a subsequent civil war. For a disadvantaged country that is trying to grow its economy, war is particularly devastating: from the physical destruction of homes, farms, schools, and businesses, to the loss of life and the complete disruption of an already fragile society. Energies of multiple generations are diverted away from growth and to survival and reconstruction. Foreign investors are deterred by war and the perpetual risk of its resumption. Regional factions in neighboring countries often take advantage of vulnerable resources and populations. Simultaneously, refugees destabilize the region. Brookings Institution scholar Susan Rice has vividly described this phenomenon as a “doom spiral.” See Lael Brainard and Derek Chollet’s book, Too Poor for Peace: Global Poverty, Conflict, and Security in the 21st Century, for more detail on what they have called the “poverty-insecurity nexus.”

Resource extraction causes civil wars – empirics prove. Pegg 3 writes36

The presence of valuable non-renewable natural resources correlates strongly with an increased risk of civil war. Recent studies conducted at the World Bank have found that the "extent of primary commodity exports is the largest single influence on the risk of conflict",88 and that "countries which have a substantial share of their income (GDP) coming from the export of primary commodities are radically more at risk of conflict."89 The availability of natural resources can provide both an incentive for rebels to take up arms and a means to finance insurrection.90 Natural resource wealth has caused, intensified, or prolonged conflicts in Angola (oil and diamonds), Congo-Brazzaville (oil), the Democratic Republic of Congo (various minerals) and Sierra Leone (diamonds). During the protracted civil war in Angola, the UNITA rebels financed their military campaigns with the sale of diamonds while the government funded its military expenditures with oil revenues. 91 The United Nations Security Council has reported that the predation of natural resources has fueled the devastating civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has made the conflict "a very lucrative business" for the rebels and their Rwandan and Ugandan patrons.92

Empirics prove. Resource extraction kills growth – causes civil war. Ross 3 writes37

It may seem paradoxical that a ‘gift’ from nature of abundant oil, gold, or gemstones tends to cause economic distress. Yet study after study has found that resource-dependent economies grow more slowly than resource-poor economies.3 A recent report by the World Bank, for example, looked at the economic performance in the 1990s of countries that had large mining sectors.4 It found that in countries with medium-sized mining sectors (between 6 and 15 percent of all exports), GDP per capita fell at an average rate of 0.7 percent a year over the course of the decade. In countries with large mining sectors (between 15 and 50 percent of exports), GDP per capita dropped by an average of 1.1 percent a year, while in countries with very large mining sectors (over 50 percent of exports) GDP per capita dropped by a remarkable 2.3 percent a year. Collectively these mining states saw their GDP per capita fall at 1.15 percent a year – a drop over the course of the decade of almost 11 percent.5 This is a catastrophic record on economic grounds alone. But it also has implications for susceptibility of these states to civil war: recent studies suggest that when a country’s growth rate turns negative, a civil war is more likely to break out. In the three years leading up to the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, GDP growth averaged – 5.56 percent; in the three years before the Congo Republic’s civil war, growth was -1.94 percent; on the eve of Liberia’s civil war, growth averaged –1.34 percent.7

35 World Savvy Monitor (free online current affairs service for educators, providing background information on complex global issues). “Global Poverty: Why?” Global Poverty and International Development. Issue 5, October 2008. http://worldsavvy.org/monitor/index.php?option=com_content&id=350&Itemid=539 36 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf 37 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

RE Bad (Poverty) Resource extraction increases poverty which turns civil war.

Ross 3 writes38

A country’s reliance on non-fuel mineral exports – and possibly oil exports as well – also tends to create atypically high poverty rates. A key reason is that resource- rich governments do an unusually poor job of providing education and health care for their citizens. One study found a strong correlation between greater dependence on oil and mineral exports and higher child mortality rates: for each increase in minerals dependence of five points, the mortality rate for children under the age of five rose by 12.7 per thousand; for each five point increase in oil dependence, the under-five mortality rate rose by 3.8 per thousand.8 Again, this pattern is intrinsically worrisome, but it also has consequences for a state’s susceptibility to violent conflict. The greater a country’s poverty, the more likely it is to face a civil war.9 Not surprisingly, people are more likely to rise up against their government when their economic predicament is bad and getting worse. Rebel groups find it easier to recruit new members when there is widespread poverty and unemployment, since it makes the prospect of combat and looting seem more attractive by comparison. A glance at the world’s most oil dependent states, and most mineral dependent states, illustrates these patterns. Table Two lists the world’s 20 most mineral-dependent states; eleven of them are classified by the World Bank as “highly-indebted poor countries” – the most troubled category of states – even though they earn large sums of foreign exchange from the sale of their resources. Since 1990, five of them have had civil wars. Table Three lists the world’s 20 most oil-dependent states. Here, too, the record is grim. Three of the top six states are classified as “highly-indebted poor countries,” and once again, five of the 20 have suffered from civil wars in the 1990s.10

RE Bad (Weak State) Resource extraction revenues weaken governments, risks civil war.

Ross 3 writes39

Natural resource revenues can, ironically, weaken governments – making them less likely to resolve social conflicts and provide public goods, like health care and education. There are two ways this can happen. One way is by retarding the effectiveness of a state’s bureaucracy. Some scholars have found that when governments are funded through oil or mineral revenues instead of taxes, they are left with weaker governments. Much of a government’s “strength” comes from its capacity to extract taxes from the population – a capacity that often takes decades to develop. A government that fails to develop this ability may also be unable to establish the type of bureaucracy that can provide effective public goods, and ameliorate social conflicts. The result may be a heightened danger of civil war.18 A second route is by weakening the state’s territorial control. If a country has resources that are highly valuable, and can be mined with little training or investment – such as alluvial gemstones, coltan or tanzalite – it will be difficult for the government to provide law and order in the extractive region. These kinds of mineral deposits attract large numbers of artisanal miners to what are typically rural, “frontier” regions, where the government’s influence is weak. Land claims in these areas become valuable, yet the weakness of the government’s authority makes it hard for claimants to enforce or protect their property rights through legal measures. As a result, they often resort to extralegal measures, including violence, to establish claims and adjudicate disputes. The utility of violence creates a demand for organizations – like criminal gangs, warlords, and rogue military units – that for a price will use extralegal means to enforce mineral claims.19 In addition, the high value-to-weight ratios of these minerals make them difficult to tax and easy to smuggle; these qualities produce high corruption levels inside the government, and large smuggling operations outside of it. The combination of weak, corrupt government authority, and strong criminal organizations can facilitate the rise of rebel movements. The case of Sierra Leone illustrates how alluvial minerals, scattered over a wide area, can weaken a government’s territorial control and lead to civil war. From the 1930s to the 1960s, Sierra Leone had a robust, mineral-based economy that produced iron ore, gold, bauxite, and rutile (titanium oxide), in addition to diamonds. 21 Most of these resources were mined by foreign firms or state-owned companies that provided the government with large revenues, and enormous patronage resources. But in the 1970s and early 1980’s Sierra Leone’s iron ore and kimberlite diamonds were worked out. The mining of alluvial diamonds by informal methods became, by default, the country’s main source of non- agricultural wealth. The Sierra Leone government had long had difficulty exercising its authority over the diamond fields, which was home to tens of thousands of unlicensed miners, plus a network of armed gangs, private armies and paramilitary forces that sold protection services to miners and traders.22 Even before civil war broke out in 1991, Sierra Leone’s growing dependence on alluvial diamonds was causing problems for the government: instead of generating revenues, the diamond fields were generating extraordinary levels of corruption. In 1988 official diamond exports were worth $22,000, while illicit diamond exports were worth perhaps $250 million.23 As long as the national economy was otherwise in good shape, the government was able to manage the corruption, warlords, and private armies in the diamond fields. But in the 1980s the country entered an economic crisis, due to the high price of imported oil, dropping commodity prices, the mining out of kimberlite diamond and iron ore deposits, and economically ruinous government policies. From 1975 to 1990, government revenues dropped from 14.5 percent to just 3.9 percent of GDP. Moreover, in 1985 the politically artful President, Siaka Stevens handed power over to his less adept successor, Joseph Momoh. Collectively, these changes led to the deterioration of the central government’s influence over the diamond-rich areas. Hence when a small group of insurgents called the Revolutionary United Front – totalling just one hundred men – crossed the border from Liberia in March 1991, the Sierra Leone government was too weak to repel them. Instead, the country was drawn into a civil war that lasted ten years, caused between 20,000 and 50,000 deaths, and displaced at least one-third of the population.

RE Bad (Democracy)

Resource extraction kills democracy, causes civil war.

Ross 3 writes40

The third effect is reduced government accountability. Governments that get their income from natural resources become less democratic – and hence, less accountable – than countries that rely on other revenue sources, such as taxation. One reason for this pattern is that when governments have an abundance of revenues, they use part of their surplus to quell dissent. Sometimes they do this through tax policies: resource-rich governments commonly use their revenues to reduce or eliminate taxes on their populations; in the absence of taxes, people are less likely to demand accountability from their government.24 Other times they do it through spending: greater patronage can also dampen latent pressures for democratization. In some cases governments use their largesse to prevent the formation of independent social groups that might eventually demand political rights.25 Of course, all undemocratic rulers use their fiscal powers to reduce dissent, but governments in resource-rich states tend to have extra revenues at their disposal. A second reason is that oil and mineral-rich governments spend an unusually large fraction of their revenues on the military, which also helps them repress dissent.26 Figure Three illustrates this pattern: it charts the average military spending (as a fraction of Gross National Income) of the twenty most oil and mineral- dependent, and the twenty least oil and mineral-dependent, states in the developing world between 1989 and 1999. Military spending is consistently between two and four times greater in the mineral-rich states than in the mineral-poor states. There are other ways that an extractive industry can boost the influence of the armed forces. Sometime the industry is controlled by the military, which gives the military more independence from, and greater influence over, the civilian government. In Indonesia, for example, the military has a large stake in many forest concessions, and collects fees from oil, gas, and mineral companies. Since this money goes to the military directly, it does not pass through the central government’s normal budgeting procedures, and the legislature has no influence over how it is spent. The result is that the extractive sector helps make the military less accountable to the civilian government, undermining Indonesia’s fragile democracy. Once again, the harm that resource dependence does to democracy is intrinsically deplorable, but it can also make states more vulnerable to civil war. Several studies have found a link between a government’s accountability and the likelihood that it will suffer from a civil war.27 Governments that are less than fully democratic are less able to resolve the grievances of their citizens, and hence may be more prone to outbreaks of violent conflict. It is easy to see how the effects of resource dependence on economies and governments can reinforce one another, creating a trap. Economic volatility, and low growth, tend to destabilize governments. When governments are unstable, they cannot manage their economies well and properly mitigate economic volatility and slow growth. Many countries – including Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – have fallen into these conflict traps.

RE Bad (Secession)

Resource extraction causes civil wars. It fuels secessionist movements and religious disputes.

Ross 3 writes41

Resource wealth tends to promote civil wars through a third mechanism, by giving people who live in resource-rich areas an economic incentive to form a separate state. 28 Table Four lists nine secessionist civil wars in regions that have abundant mineral resources.29 The regions that suffered from resource-inspired insurrections have several elements that set them apart from similar, but non-rebellious regions. One is that before the resource was exploited, people in these areas had a distinct identity – whether ethnic, linguistic, or religious – that set them apart from the majority population. Another is that local people typically bore many of the costs of the extraction process itself – due to land expropriation, environmental damage, and the inmigration of labor from other parts of the country. Finally, there was commonly a widespread belief that the central government was unfairly appropriating the wealth that belonged to them, and that they would be richer if they were a separate state. Interestingly enough, this final belief is sometimes mistaken. The case of Aceh, Indonesia, offers a good illustration.30 In many ways, Aceh – a province on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra – was an unlikely place for a 28 Important analyses of this problem include Le Billon 2001; Collier and Hoeffler 2002; Fearon 2002. 29 Since any region might be perceived as having some type of resource, I have limited this list to regions that had significant oil or mineral industries in operation, or under development, at or near the time that the civil war began. Examples can also be found in wealthy states: Collier and Hoeffler [2002] describe the case of Scotland, where a peaceful independence movement emerged in the early 1970s, following a sharp rise in the value of North Sea oil. 15 separatist rebellion. Aceh played an important role in throwing off Dutch colonial rule in the 1940s, and establishing the Indonesian republic. Although the Acehnese consider themselves ethnically distinct from the rest of Indonesia’s population, they adhere to the same religion (Islam) and generally speak the national language (Bahasa Indonesia). Aceh had one of the highest rates of economic growth of any province in Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s; by the late 1990s Aceh was at or above the national average in per capita income, and in most welfare categories. Yet a secessionist movement was formed in Aceh in 1976, just as a large natural gas facility was beginning its operations. The facility generated local resentments in at least four ways: the site’s construction displaced hundreds of families and several entire villages; the area’s development created a wave of immigration and subsequently an anti-immigrant backlash; the discharge of chemicals, plus periodic gas leaks, caused health problems among locals; and the influx of revenues, and the large police and military presence, led to exceptionally high levels of corruption. But the most important source of discontent was the belief that the jobs and the revenues from the natural gas plant were not being adequately shared with the people of Aceh. This issue was seized upon by the separatist movement, popularly known as GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka). GAM propaganda suggested that if independent, the Acehnese would become wealthy like the citizens of Brunei, the tiny oil-rich sultanate on the island of Borneo. This claim was wildly exaggerated, by at least an order of magnitude; but it was widely believed, reflecting the low credibility of the Indonesian government. Although small at first, by the late 1990s GAM won widespread support among the population, partly due to the brutality and ineptitude of the government’s anti-insurgency campaign. The civil war in the Sudan was also triggered, in part, by a dispute over how to divide the benefits of mineral wealth. In 1983 Sudanese President Numeiry took a series of measures that upset the delicate balance between the predominantly Muslim north and the heavily Christian and Animist south; among them was his decision to place newly discovered oil in the country’s south under the jurisdiction of the north, and to build an oil refinery in the north instead of the south. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) subsequently complained that the north was stealing the resources of the south, including oil; demanded that work cease on a pipeline to take oil from the south to the refinery in the north; and in February 1984, attacked an oil exploration base, killing three foreign workers and bringing the project to a halt.31 Instead of responding to the SPLA’s demands, however, the government waged a campaign of astonishing brutality. To date, the conflict has killed an estimated two million people. These essential features – an ethnically distinct population that bears too many of the costs of resource extraction, and enjoys too few of the benefits – are repeated in most of the other cases and have repeatedly led to long and bitter civil wars.32

RE Bad (Rebels) Resource extraction industries can easily fund rebel forces. Ross 3 writes42

To assemble and sustain a fighting force of hundreds or thousands of soldiers, a rebel group needs a regular source of income.33 Before the end of the Cold War, successful rebel groups in the developing world were typically financed by foreign powers – most often the U.S., the Soviet Union, and France. Since the Cold War ended, insurgent groups have been forced to find other ways to bankroll themselves; many have turned to the natural resource sector.34 Why natural resources? There are probably two reasons: the extraction of natural resources can produce unusually large profits (i.e., rents); and their production is tied to a specific location and cannot be easily moved. These characteristics make natural resource firms – particularly mineral firms – unusually susceptible to looting, or extortion, on a sustained basis. If rebels instead try to loot or extort money from manufacturing firms, the firms will move to a safer area, or be forced out of business. But mining firms cannot move, and they often earn enough money to pay off rebel groups and still earn a profit. These characteristics – plus the location of most resource industries in rural areas, remote from government centers – make resources an ideal source of income for rebel groups.

Multiple rebel groups have used resource extraction to finance themselves. Ross 3 writes43

There are many examples of rebel groups that have financed themselves by selling natural resources. In general, these are resources that can be easily exploited by small numbers of workers with little training, and little or no investment – such as gemstones, coltan, or timber. Since the late 1980s there have been seven prominent examples: • Angola’s UNITA, which over the course of the 1990s sold hundreds of millions – perhaps even several billion – dollars worth of diamonds;35 • Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, which in the 1990s financed itself through the sale of $40-60 million of lapis lazuli annually;36 • A variety of groups in Burma associated with the Kachin, Wa, and Shan peoples, sustained their armies in the 1970s and 1980s by selling jadeite, rubies, sapphires, timber, and opium;37 • Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, which at their peak in the early 1990s earned between $120 and 240 million a year from the sale of rubies and timber;38 • A range of armies in the Democratic Republic of Congo have systematically looted the country from the beginning of the current conflict, in 1998, to the present; these include both foreign forces (particularly those from Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe) and domestic militias [notably the factions of the Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD), the Maï Maï, and the Mouvement de libération congolais (MLC)]. Among the looted goods have been diamonds, gold, coltan, timber, and coffee.39 In the early 1990s in Liberia, Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia was thought to be earning some $75 million a year from taxing the sale of diamonds, timber, rubber, cannabis, and iron ore; 40 • In Sierra Leone in the mid-to-late 1990s, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) sustained itself largely by producing between $25 million and $125 million in diamonds per year.41 In some of the conflicts that began during the Cold War but continued after it, insurgents were forced to switch form foreign funding to natural resource funding. In Angola, for example, UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) was financed by the United States and South Africa for most of the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1980s, however, UNITA set up bases in the diamond-rich provinces of northeast Angola. At first it gained revenue by attacking mines and establishing protection rackets; later it began to act more like a government, controlling and taxing both mines and artisanal miners For a time, UNITA received income from both the diamond trade and its foreign sponsors; but the end of the Cold War, and the end of apartheid in South Africa, left UNITA with no outside support. After the breakdown of a 1991-92 peace initiative, UNITA launched a brutal offense that brought all of Angola’s diamond-rich areas under UNITA’s control. Over the course of the 1990s UNITA raised hundreds of millions – perhaps even several billion – dollars from diamond sales. Although vast sums were lost in corruption, the revenues also helped sustain UNITA as a military force.42 Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge went through a similar transition. From 1979 to the late 1980s, the Khmer Rouge – largely exiled in Thailand – was financed by the Chinese government. But at the end of the 1980’s the Chinese government curtailed its support, which forced the Khmer Rouge to adopt a new financial strategy. In December 1988 Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot explained the strategy to his troops: We are spending many tens of millions of baht to augment the assistance of our foreign friends, but that is still not enough and there are many shortages. It is thus imperative that we find ways to develop the natural resources that exist in our liberated and semi-liberated zones as assets to be utilized in the fight against the [Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government] [quotes in Thayer, 2/7/91]. Shortly after this speech, the Khmer Rouge captured a strip of Cambodian territory that was rich with ruby and sapphire deposits, and commercially-valuable timber, and gave mining and logging licenses to Thai companies [Abuza 1993]. These arrangments produced a substantial income for the Khmer Rouge, which enabled it to continue its fight until 1997.43

42 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf 43 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

RE Bad (Booty Futures)

Resource extraction fuels civil wars due to the booty futures market.

Ross 3 writes44

There is also a less common – but possibly more dangerous – type of resource transaction: the sale of future exploitation rights to the spoils of war. The seven examples above cover the sale of resources already captured by the rebels; but sometimes combatants sell exploitation rights to natural resources that are not yet under the seller’s control, but which the seller hopes to capture in battle. Since these transactions are for the sale of future exploitation rights, they might be called “booty futures.” They are similar to other types of commodity futures. But while normal markets for commodity futures – like the Chicago Board of Trade – are formal, regulated, centralized at a single location, and have many buyers and sellers, the wartime market for booty futures is informal, often covert, has no fixed location, and includes a relatively small number of actors. It only operates in Africa, at least so far. The booty futures market can help solve the financing problems that prospective rebel movements often face, provided that they wish to do battle in a resource-rich country. If an aspiring rebel group has no money, but stands a chance of capturing valuable resources in combat, it can sell off the future right to exploit the resources it hopes to capture, either to a foreign firm or a neighboring government. The rebels can then use this money to pay soldiers and buy arms, and thus gain the capacity to capture the promised resource.44 The market for booty futures is in some ways more dangerous than the standard market for conflict diamonds and other wartime commodities, since the booty futures market tends to benefit the weakest combatants. When a combatant in a civil war sells natural resources that are under their control, it indicates they are in a relatively strong military position, since they control a valuable piece of territory. But if they must sell resource futures, it implies they are in a weak position, since they have not yet captured they resource whose value they hope to exploit. The sale of booty futures is a tool of the weak against the strong: it helps fund groups that are too poor, or too feeble, to capture territory on their own, and might otherwise be forced to surrender. It hence tends to fund the initiation of civil wars that might otherwise never begin, or help lengthen wars that are on the verge of ending. The sale of booty futures is also dangerous because it has self-fulfilling properties. If the rebel group was unable to sell the future right to exploit the resource, it might not have the funds it needs to capture the resource itself. Selling the future right to the resource makes its seizure possible. Without the futures market, the rebel offensive – and perhaps the conflict itself – would be less likely. The trade in booty futures can not only help initiate conflicts, it can lengthen pre-existing conflicts. If either side in a civil war is near defeat, and it is fighting for control of resource-rich territory, it can try to sell off the future right to exploit the resources it hopes to capture or retain on the battlefield. Again, the sale of booty futures can have self-fulfilling properties: the sale of future rights enables the army to actually capture or hold the resource itself. Instead of being defeated or forced to the negotiating table, the army is able to continue fighting – thus lengthening the war.45 In the 1997 civil war in Congo-Brazzaville, the private militia of former President Denis Sassou-Nguesso was funded, in part, by the sale of future exploitation rights to the Congo’s substantial oil reserves. On the eve of the conflict, Sassou received substantial assistance from a French oil company, Elf-Aquitaine (now TotalFinaelf). Some reports suggest he received $150 million in cash; others state that Elf helped him purchase arms.46 These funds enabled him to defeat the incumbent president, Pascal Lissouba, following a four-month war that destroyed much of Brazzaville and cost 10,000 lives. At two separate junctures, the sale of booty futures – this time by the government – prolonged the Sierra Leone war. In March 1995, the rebel RUF had taken control of the country’s main diamond fields and advanced to within 20 miles of the capital. To stave off defeat, the government offered future mining rights to the Kono diamond fields – then in rebel hands – to Branch Energy, a South African company. In exchange, the government received the services of a South African mercenary firm, Executive Outcomes, which was closely linked to Branch Energy. The strategy proved highly successful for the government: by the end of 1995, Executive Outcomes had captured the Kono diamond fields, turned them over to Branch Energy to manage, and put RUF on the defensive. It was somewhat less successful for Executive Outcomes, which was never fully paid for its services by the cash-strapped government.47 The Sierra Leone government also traded diamond futures for military support a second time, two years later, when it once again teetered on the edge of defeat. In May 1997, the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was overthrown by a group of junior military officers and was forced into exile. To finance a counteroffensive, Kabbah decided to sell $10 million diamond futures to Rakesh Saxena, a banker from Thailand Saxena, in December 1997; he then used the proceeds to hire the services of Sandline, a London-based mercenary firm. Over the next three months, Sandline and Nigerian forces (who were operating under the authority of the Economic Community of West African States) launched a military offense that forced the junta from power. In March 1998, Kabbah returned to Freetown, the Sierra Leone capital, and was restored as President.48 These booty future swaps – and similar trades in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Angola – have in each case helped initiate a war or prolong one that appeared to be ending.49

RE Bad (Kidnapping)

Resource extraction helps fund rebel movements through extortion and kidnapping.

Ross 3 writes45

Under certain circumstances, rebels can earn large sums by extorting money from, and kidnapping the workers of, resource firms. Although extortion and kidnapping are endemic in conflict zones, oil, gas, and mining industries are exceptionally susceptible to them – partly because they may operate in remote areas, partly because mines cannot be relocated to safer areas, and partly because they earn rents, and therefore may remain profitable even after paying off extortionists.50 Extortion and kidnapping have been important features of the Colombian civil war, and they have also played smaller roles in the wars in Sudan and Aceh, Indonesia. In Colombia and Sudan, the targeted resource was oil – or rather, a long oil pipeline that ran through contested territory. In Aceh, it was a natural gas facility. In Colombia, oil must be transported to the coast from the unstable interior through pipelines that are hundreds of miles long. In 2000, the pipelines were bombed 98 times. Colombia’s rebel groups have used these attacks to extort an estimated $140 million annually; this windfall has enabled one group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), to grow from fewer than 40 members to at least 3,000.51 Colombia’s rebel groups have also turned kidnapping into a major industry. According to a government study, between 1991 and 1999 they earned a remarkable US $1.5 billion from kidnap ransoms; many victims were associated with the oil industry.52 The problem has been compounded, ironically, by the growing use of kidnap insurance. Insurance helps individual victims of kidnapping. But it also encourages the growth of the kidnapping industry by making ransom payments swifter and easier, and reducing the precautions that potential victims should exercise.

RE Bad (Exports)

Rebels will get financed by primary commodity exports – increases risk of civil wars.

Collier and Hoeffler 4 write46

Using a comprehensive data set of civil wars over the period 1960-99 we used logit regressions to predict the risk of the outbreak of war in each five-year episode. We find that a model that focuses on the opportunities for rebellion performs well, whereas objective indicators of grievance add little explanatory power. The model is robust to a range of tests for outliers, redefinitions, and alternative specifications. One factor influencing the opportunity for rebellion is the availability of finance. We have shown that primary commodity exports substantially increase conflict risk. We have interpreted this as being due to the opportunities such commodities provide for extortion, making rebellion feasible and perhaps even attractive. An alternative explanation would be that primary commodity dependence worsens governance and so generates stronger grievances. However, we are controlling for economic performance—the level, growth, and distribution of income—and for political rights (which appear not to affect the risk of conflict). While we would not wish to discount the possibility of an effect working through corruption (for which we cannot control), there is plenty of case study evidence supporting the extortion interpretation. Another source of finance for which there is good case study evidence is diasporas. We have found that diasporas substantially increase the risk of conflict renewal, and it is hard to find an alternative explanation for this result.

46 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler (Center for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford). “Greed and grievance in civil war.” Oxford University Press. 2004. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Africa-Specific Turns

Resource extraction causes African civil wars, turns growth. Empirics prove. Hoeffler 8 writes47 Within Figure 1 the number of wars in Africa is highlighted. The trend of rising prevalence throughout the Cold War and a decrease thereafter is similar for African countries. There are two peaks in the African series, 1991/1992 with eight and 1989 with nine wars. Since then the number of wars has fallen to two in 2006. If one takes into consideration that only about 12 percent of the global population live in Africa1 , it seems that Africa has experienced more violent conflict than other continents. African wars have also lasted longer, on average they lasted about eight years while the global average is about six and a half years.2 The question why Africa has seen more wars has been examined by a number of scholars. Colonial history and proxy wars throughout the Cold War are often at the core of the argument. Most of this amounts to an African ‘exceptionalism’, in other words Africa’s troubled past is Africa specific and cannot be analysed in the same way as wars in other parts 1 Based on population data for 2000, data source: WDI 2007, author’s calculation. 2 Data source: Uppsala/PRIO Armed Conflict Data Set, author’s calculation. of the world. However, a global statistical analysis of the onset of civil wars suggests that Africa has experienced more civil wars mainly because the economic circumstances, low income, low growth and high dependence on natural resources, have made war feasible (Collier and Hoeffler, 2002). Taking these factors into consideration Africa has not experienced more wars than the continent’s characteristics would predict. In addition the wars in Africa have also resulted in making the continent poorer and preventing development in many countries. This cycle of poverty and war has been described as a ‘conflict trap’ (see for example Collier, 2007). If colonial and Cold War history are the main causes of this trap there is not much hope for the future since we cannot change history. If on the other hand economic factors are important determinants of conflict risk (Fearon and Laitin, 2003, Collier and Hoeffler, 2004a, Collier, Hoeffler and Rohner, 2007) there is hope that the future will not look like the past. Since the 1990s Africa has seen a reduction in the prevalence of civil war and countries with long and devastating civil wars are now at peace. Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Rwanda are such examples. Countries suffer from many different consequences of civil war. Wars kill people in many different ways: civilians and soldiers are killed in combat, people die because there is a higher prevalence of preventable communicable diseases and during wars people are killed due to increased violent crime. Wars force mass migration. Post-war economies are in a worse shape than before the war and far from bringing an improvement to the political system, in general post-war societies are less democratic (Collier and Hoeffler, 2007a). Countries with a violent past also face a high risk of renewed conflict, about 40 percent of countries experience a new civil war within a decade (Collier, Hoeffler and Söderbom, 2008). Dealing with the consequences of war is not only a humanitarian imperative but dealing with the economic and political consequences is also important because it decreases the risk of the civil war breaking out again. Dealing with the consequences of civil wars is our chance of ‘breaking the conflict trap’.

47 Anke Hoeffler (from the Center for the Study of African Economics, Oxford University). “Dealing with the Consequences of Violent Conflicts in Africa.” Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Oil is exacerbating South Sudan conflict now, risking civil war. Doki and Straziuso 13 write48

Armed rebels are said to be in control of some of South Sudan's oil fields, raising questions of how long the country's oil will flow and whether Sudan could enter the conflict. President Salva Kiir implored his country to turn away from ethnic violence and met on Friday (local time) with foreign ministers from neighbouring states, including Kenya and Ethiopia, who flew into Juba, the capital, to help calm tensions after a week of ethnic strife that is estimated to have killed hundreds. Kiir did not speak publicly, but the government's Twitter feed attributed this quote to him: "Those who may want to take the law into their hands, the long arm of the government will get them." Fighting continued to spread on Friday in two states, Unity - an oil area - and Jonglei, as armed groups opposed to the nation's military emerged, said a South Sudan expert communicating with combatants and UN officials in strife-torn regions outside the capital. "We've seen the conflict expand quite rapidly and quite dramatically in recent days. We've seen the emergence of different armed groups under different commands, and we've seen the former vice president say he's not interested in talks that don't end in Salva Kiir stepping down," said Casie Copeland, South Sudan analyst for the International Crisis Group. She added that the arrival of regional foreign ministers in Juba "is genuinely a good thing." Armed opposition groups appeared to be in control of some oil fields in Unity state, she said. South Sudan's oil fields have historically been a target for rebel movements. "The potential for oil wealth to exacerbate the current power struggle should not be underestimated," said Emma Vickers of Global Witness, a London-based group that investigates and campaigns to prevent natural resource related conflict. "If rebel forces were to capture the oil fields, they could effectively hold the government to ransom." The United Nations said on Friday that 35,000 people continue to seek refuge at UN bases in three locations across the country, including 20,000 at two bases in the capital. The US Embassy had a fifth emergency evacuation flight on Friday to move Americans out of the country. British, German and Dutch planes were also scheduled to fly out. Hundreds of foreigners, including aid workers, have hurriedly left South Sudan this week at the urging of foreign embassies concerned about the possibility of out-of-control violence. Forty-five US troops were dispatched to Juba earlier this week to protect US citizens and property. A top UN official in the country, Toby Lanzer, said Friday that "difficulties" continued in Jonglei state, including the province capital, Bor, where a top military commander loyal to Machar defected from the army this week, taking his troops with him. South Sudan gets nearly 99 per cent of its government budget from oil revenues. The country reportedly earned US$1.3 billion in oil sales in just five months this year, Global Witness said. South Sudan, the world's newest country, peacefully broke away from Sudan in 2011 after decades of war and years of negotiations that former US President George W Bush invested heavily in. The south's oil flows north through Sudan's pipelines, and a rebel takeover of southern oil fields could invite Sudan into the conflict. . Ethnic violence broke out among South Sudan's presidential guard late on Sunday night, and fighting spread across the country over the next several days, leading to fears of a civil war between ethnic groups. Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, earlier this week said an attempted coup had triggered the violence, and the blame was placed on fired Vice President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer. But officials have since said a fight between Dinka and Nuer members of the presidential guard triggered the violence. Machar's ouster from the country's No. 2 political position earlier this year had stoked ethnic tensions.

48 Charlton Doki and Jason Straziuso (staff writers). “South Sudan conflict spreading ‘rapidly.’” Associated Press. December 21st, 2013. http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/africa/9543459/South-Sudan-conflict-spreading-rapidly Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Growth Turn Civil wars turn growth. Hoeffler 8 writes49

Taking the national level first, one clear cost of civil war is a reduction in economic growth. Using a panel data estimate, one year of conflict reduces a country’s growth rate by 2.2 percent. Since, on average, each civil conflict lasts for about seven years, the economy will be 15 percent smaller at the end of the war than if the war had not taken place. During the post-war recovery, even though the economy on average grows at an annual rate of more than 1 percent above the norm, it will take roughly ten years to return to its pre- war growth rates (that is, 17 years after the conflict started). 21 years after the start of the original war, the GDP has returned to the level it would have achieved if no war had occurred. The total economic cost, expressed as a present value at the start of the war (using a 5 percent discount rate), is 105 percent of the GDP at that point. The welfare of a country’s population is further reduced because of increased military spending during and after the war. It is estimated that military spending increases by about 1.8 percent during the war, and only falls back by 0.5 percent once the conflict has ended. Assuming that this higher level of spending lasts for only ten years after the conflict, the additional cost (expressed again as present value when the conflict started) is 18 percent of GDP. In addition, conflict has a severe effect on human health. One way of summarising this effect is to express the cost in terms of Disability Affected Life Years (DALYs): a measure of the total number of people affected and the period for which their disability lasts. An average war causes an estimated 0.5 million DALYs each year. Assuming they decline smoothly to zero in the 21st year and discounting them at 5 percent as for the direct economic costs gives a figure of 5 million DALYs as the net present value of health costs when hostilities start. If each DALY is valued at $1,000 (roughly the per capita income in many at-risk countries), the economic cost of harm to human health in a typical war is around $5 billion. Regional Costs What are the effects at the regional level? Regression analysis suggests that the growth rate of neighbouring countries not directly involved in the conflict is reduced by 0.9 percent during the war. If they subsequently recover at the same rate as the conflict country, the additional cost (as a present value at the start of the conflict) is 43 percent of initial GDP. On average, each country has 2.7 neighbours, so the direct effect of a typical civil war on neighbouring countries is 115 percent of the initial GDP of one country: greater than the direct effect in the conflict country itself. There is also an effect on military spending in adjoining countries: a neighbourhood arms race often ensues. In the average case considered so far, a 1 percent rise in military expenditure in the country at war would increase the average spending of bordering countries by 0.23 percent. In a typical conflict, that means military spending will increase by 0.4 percent of GDP during the war, and by 0.3 percent during the post-conflict period: a total net present value of 4.3 percent of the country’s initial GDP. On average, there are 2.7 neighbouring countries; thus the total extra cost of the regional arms race is about 12 percent of one country’s GDP. Other costs which are too difficult to quantify are incurred both in the country at war and in the region as a whole, including forced migration and increased disease. With the proviso that the figures so far are therefore underestimated to some degree, the total benefit of averting a single “typical” civil war can be calculated. The various national and regional costs covered so far amount to 250 percent of initial GDP. The average GDP of conflict-affected low-income countries just prior to war is $19.7 billion. Therefore, the cost of a single war is around $49 billion. To this we must add $5 billion of health costs, giving a total cost of $54 billion for a single low-income country. Legacy Effect This is already a significant figure, but in addition there is the “conflict trap”: countries that have just experienced a civil war are more likely to have further conflict. Looking at the 21 countries in which wars started and ended in the period 1965-99, the risk of conflict over the five years before the war averaged 22.3 percent, but this rose to 38.6 percent post-war. Over the 15 year period needed for the risk to reach the pre-war level again, the additional discounted cost are estimated at $10.2 billion. Thus the total national and regional cost of a single war is more than $64 billion. There are additional, global impacts of civil wars, massive in scale but difficult to assign a cost to. For example three world scourges over the last 30 years have had civil conflicts as contributory factors: hard drug production, AIDS and international terrorism. Thus, since the global cost are not included in the $64 billion it should be treated as a conservative estimate. This cost calculation of about $64bn is based on global data. Is this estimate relevant for Africa? Africa’s economies are smaller and the average GDP figure is lower, hence the loss of GDP would be lower if only African countries were to be considered. On the other hand African wars are longer and caused more loss of life, thus increasing the cost of war. African countries also have on average more neighbours and thus an Africa specific estimate of the regional effects of war

RE Turn

Civil wars turn resource extraction. Mitchell and Thies 12 writes50 In this article, we examine the endogenous relationship between the production of natural resources and civil war. We focus on several prominent resources that have received a great deal of attention in the civil war literature including oil, diamonds, and marine fishery catches. Once we control for the two-way relationship between these factors, we show that most of the relationship runs from civil war to natural resource production. Civil wars tend to wreak havoc on the production of natural resources, reducing oil production and diamond production. This occurs because such resources are explicitly targeted by rebel and government forces and because businesses may pull out their investments as the risks to their employees increase. However, we also show that the effect of civil war on resources may depend on the characteristics of the resources and nature of the conflicts. Some resources, such as marine fisheries, may actually see an improvement as laborers in the industry are forced to flee an area or join the fighting of a war and as demands on other agricultural resources increases. Our findings suggest that civil war might not only fuel a development trap, but that these countries may also find themselves in a natural resource trap, as civil war moves more economic activity into this arena. At the same time, the occurrence of civil war reduces the resources that are available for production or extraction, which further disadvantages the state.

That’s an additional warrant for the resource curse. Mitchell and Thies 12 writes51

The negative consequences of civil war on these measures of natural resource exports show the largely negative effects of war on states’ economic production. This creates a resource curse trap because countries that experience civil wars may become increasingly dependent on higher levels of natural resource production (Brunnschweiler and Bulte 2009), which in turn is problematic due to the destruction of those resources during war and the potential risks for future conflicts, especially if the resources in contention are located far from the center and are relatively easy to extract.

50 Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Cameron Thies (University of Iowa). “Resource Curse in Reverse: How Civil Wars Influence Natural Resource Production.” International Interactions: Empirical and Theoretical Research in International Relations. April 10th, 2012. 51 Sara McLaughlin Mitchell and Cameron Thies (University of Iowa). “Resource Curse in Reverse: How Civil Wars Influence Natural Resource Production.” International Interactions: Empirical and Theoretical Research in International Relations. April 10th, 2012. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Grievance Alt Cause

Studies that say grievances are a major alt cause are flawed. Rebel groups likely use grievance narratives to cover up greedy motives. Collier 99 writes52

A useful conceptual distinction in understanding the motivation for civil war is that between greed and grievance. At one extreme rebellions might arise because the rebels aspire to wealth through capturing resources extra-legally. At the other extreme they might arise because rebels aspire to rid the nation, or the group of people with which they identify, of an unjust regime. These two motivations obviously imply radically different types of policy intervention if the international community wishes to promote the prospects of peace. The most obvious way of discovering what motivates people is to ask them. However, here we immediately encounter a problem. Those rebel organisations which are sufficiently successful to get noticed are unlikely to be so naïve as to admit to greed as a motive. Successful rebel organisations place considerable emphasis upon good public relations with the international community. Narratives of grievance play much better with this community than narratives of greed. A narrative of grievance is not only much more functional externally, it is also more satisfying personally: rebel leaders may readily be persuaded by their own propaganda. Further, an accentuated sense of grievance may be functional internally for the rebel organization. The organization has to recruit: indeed, its success depends upon it. As the organization gets larger, the material benefits which it can offer its additional members is likely to diminish. By playing upon a sense of grievance, the organization may therefore be able to get additional recruits more cheaply. Hence, even where the rationale at the top of the organization is essentially greed, the actual discourse may be entirely dominated by grievance. I should emphasize that I do not mean to be cynical. I am not arguing that rebels necessary deceive either others or themselves in explaining their motivation in terms of grievance. Rather, I am simply arguing that since both greed-motivated and grievance-motivated rebel organisations will embed their behaviour in a narrative of grievance, the observation of that narrative provides no informational content to the researcher as to the true motivation for rebellion. To discover the truth we need a different research approach. The approach I take, which is the conventional one in social science, is to infer motivation from patterns of observed behaviour. If someone says `I don’t like chocolates’, but keeps on eating them, we infer that she really likes them, and the question of why she says the opposite is then usually relegated to being of secondary importance.

52 Paul Collier (former director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, and Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at The University of Oxford and Fellow of St Antony's College). “Doing Well out of War.” Paper prepared for Conference on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, London. April 10th, 1999. http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/courses/PoliticalScience/474A1/documents/CollierDoingWellOutofWarApril99.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Cash Transfers CP 1. Perm, transfer cash but don’t extract resources. Solves 100% of the net benefits. 2. Cash transfers encourage overreliance on resource revenues, and can’t solve econ, rent-seeking, or democracy. Gillies 10 writes53

As for implications, several analysts argue that direct distribution will generate improved governance in resource rich states. These benefits, however, are not automatic or even likely in every political context. The potential benefits discussed here—the creation of a constituency for responsible resource management, the leveling of the playing field between leaders and citizens, the strengthening of accountability via new taxation, and the avoidance of principal- agent problems—rely on causal assumptions which may not hold true in every resource rich country. Rather than assigning direct distribution with generic benefits, the likelihood of these governance gains as well as possible risks need to be evaluated in each individual country. As to whether direct distribution is a good idea, the answer is, inevitably: It depends. Along with the economic effects of cash transfers, the potential governance risks and benefits should inform the decision to adopt direct distribution and the design of such programs. The discussion above suggests several preliminary recommendations which might assist in deciding where and how to initiate cash transfers. They include: Political motives will drive the introduction of direct distribution. However, the design of cash transfer programs should take care to advance long-term governance and development objectives, as well as short-term political ends. These could be contradictory: a leader may seek to use cash transfers to appease a restive faction in order to calm a post-conflict setting, even though such unequal treatment may exacerbate longer-term grievances; or, a leader seeking re-election may promise unsustainably large cash transfers that contradict optimal depletion rates and medium-term economic objectives. Politically-aware policy design can produce cash transfer models that avoid these problems while still offering political gains. The popular resonance of cash transfers may distract attention away from the other facets of effective natural resource management. Successful revenue policies will guard against price volatility and inflation, advance well-conceived economic strategies that increase public goods, build human capital and diversify the economy, and reflect principles of transparency and accountability. Special situations, such as post-conflict scenarios, require an even more robust complex of policies. Cash transfers represent only one component of a viable revenue management strategy, and their allure should not be allowed to monopolize the debate over fiscal and economic affairs. Cash transfers will increase citizen interest in the management of natural resource wealth. This could devolve into a singular quest for larger transfers unless the public is provided with information about the breadth of resource revenue management issues (such as those mentioned above). Moreover, in order to serve as an effective constituency, citizens will need channels for articulating their demands to policymakers, such as a representative legislature, viable elections, a free media, an empowered civil society and widespread access to information. The political feasibility of introducing cash transfers and of introducing broad-based taxation will diverge in most countries. Initiating both could lead to a more accountable fiscal contract with significant positive governance effects. If this is the goal, steps to advance both policies should be taken simultaneously and, ideally, in a contingent fashion. If broad-based taxation is unlikely, the governance benefits of cash transfers will be modest, and the risks of exacerbating rentierism increase. The desirability of cash transfers, and in particular their size, should be considered with this in mind. If a country seeks to initiate both cash direct distribution and broad-based taxation, the capacity of the government to credibly execute tax collection must be assessed. Without a major shift in the political order, a fair, consensual and efficient tax system is unlikely to emerge in a country where all other public institutions lack these traits. Therefore taxation will generate governance gains in contexts already characterized by at least moderate levels of accountability and public sector functionality. The design of cash transfer programs should deliberately try to minimize the risk of spreading rent-seeking tendencies throughout the population. The size of the transfer should be contained (unless taxation is introduced), and innovative strategies identified for shifting attention away from state handouts to productive, non-extractive sectors of the economy. In countries with weak institutions and high levels of corruption, cash transfers will suffer from principal-agent problems if its administrators are allowed to engage in fraud and misappropriation. Extensive transparency, oversight and process safeguards are required, as is the realization that even these protections may not work in the most pervasively corrupt contexts.

53 Alexandra Gillies. “Giving Money Away: The Politics of Direct Distribution in Resource Rich States.” Center for Global Development Working Paper. 2010. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Prefer Gillies. Moss admits my author has a point.

Neg author Moss 10 writes54

The discovery of oil in a developing country is potentially beneficial and, simultaneously, potentially calamitous. While countries could put oil revenues toward building much-needed schools and roads, fixing and staffing health systems, and policing the streets, many resourcerich states fare little better—and often much worse—than their counterparts. Too often public money is misallocated and funds meant to be saved are raided, and those living in poor resource-rich countries pay the price. While this so-called resource curse is well established in the literature, solutions to counteract its corrosive effects remain highly elusive. CGD is exploring one policy option that may address the root mechanism of the resource curse: using cash transfers to hand the money directly to citizens and thereby protect the social contract between the government and its people. Under this proposal, a government would transfer some or all of the revenue from natural resource extraction to citizens in universal, transparent, and regular payments. The state would treat these payments as normal income and tax it accordingly—thus forcing the state to collect taxes, fostering public accountability and responsible management of the natural resources. This paper by Alexandra Gillies, commissioned by CGD as part of our Oil to Cash initiative, addresses the political feasibility and political implications of such a scheme.1 Under what conditions is direct distribution even possible? What political conditions would facilitate its implementation? What would be the possible impact of such a scheme on political institutions and public accountability? While the answers to some of these questions remain speculative and mixed, Gillies provides key insights into the political calculations of natural resource rents by highlighting some potential obstacles, as well as some promising possibilities, for implementing just such a direct distribution scheme.

54 Todd Moss (Vice President for Programs and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development). “Giving Money Away: The Politics of Direct Distribution in Resource Rich States.” CGD Working Paper – Forward. 2010. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Reliance on resource revenues weakens the government, causing civil wars. Empirics prove. Ross 3 writes55

Natural resource revenues can, ironically, weaken governments – making them less likely to resolve social conflicts and provide public goods, like health care and education. There are two ways this can happen. One way is by retarding the effectiveness of a state’s bureaucracy. Some scholars have found that when governments are funded through oil or mineral revenues instead of taxes, they are left with weaker governments. Much of a government’s “strength” comes from its capacity to extract taxes from the population – a capacity that often takes decades to develop. A government that fails to develop this ability may also be unable to establish the type of bureaucracy that can provide effective public goods, and ameliorate social conflicts. The result may be a heightened danger of civil war.18 A second route is by weakening the state’s territorial control. If a country has resources that are highly valuable, and can be mined with little training or investment – such as alluvial gemstones, coltan or tanzalite – it will be difficult for the government to provide law and order in the extractive region. These kinds of mineral deposits attract large numbers of artisanal miners to what are typically rural, “frontier” regions, where the government’s influence is weak. Land claims in these areas become valuable, yet the weakness of the government’s authority makes it hard for claimants to enforce or protect their property rights through legal measures. As a result, they often resort to extralegal measures, including violence, to establish claims and adjudicate disputes. The utility of violence creates a demand for organizations – like criminal gangs, warlords, and rogue military units – that for a price will use extralegal means to enforce mineral claims.19 In addition, the high value-to-weight ratios of these minerals make them difficult to tax and easy to smuggle; these qualities produce high corruption levels inside the government, and large smuggling operations outside of it. The combination of weak, corrupt government authority, and strong criminal organizations can facilitate the rise of rebel movements. The case of Sierra Leone illustrates how alluvial minerals, scattered over a wide area, can weaken a government’s territorial control and lead to civil war. From the 1930s to the 1960s, Sierra Leone had a robust, mineral-based economy that produced iron ore, gold, bauxite, and rutile (titanium oxide), in addition to diamonds. 21 Most of these resources were mined by foreign firms or state-owned companies that provided the government with large revenues, and enormous patronage resources. But in the 1970s and early 1980’s Sierra Leone’s iron ore and kimberlite diamonds were worked out. The mining of alluvial diamonds by informal methods became, by default, the country’s main source of non- agricultural wealth. The Sierra Leone government had long had difficulty exercising its authority over the diamond fields, which was home to tens of thousands of unlicensed miners, plus a network of armed gangs, private armies and paramilitary forces that sold protection services to miners and traders.22 Even before civil war broke out in 1991, Sierra Leone’s growing dependence on alluvial diamonds was causing problems for the government: instead of generating revenues, the diamond fields were generating extraordinary levels of corruption. In 1988 official diamond exports were worth $22,000, while illicit diamond exports were worth perhaps $250 million.23 As long as the national economy was otherwise in good shape, the government was able to manage the corruption, warlords, and private armies in the diamond fields. But in the 1980s the country entered an economic crisis, due to the high price of imported oil, dropping commodity prices, the mining out of kimberlite diamond and iron ore deposits, and economically ruinous government policies. From 1975 to 1990, government revenues dropped from 14.5 percent to just 3.9 percent of GDP. Moreover, in 1985 the politically artful President, Siaka Stevens handed power over to his less adept successor, Joseph Momoh. Collectively, these changes led to the deterioration of the central government’s influence over the diamond-rich areas. Hence when a small group of insurgents called the Revolutionary United Front – totalling just one hundred men – crossed the border from Liberia in March 1991, the Sierra Leone government was too weak to repel them. Instead, the country was drawn into a civil war that lasted ten years, caused between 20,000 and 50,000 deaths, and displaced at least one-third of the population.

3. Perm, do both. The plan doesn’t ban all RE, only the uncertain types. None of his evidence specifies how much RE is key.

4. The PP is the middle ground which doesn’t end all industry, so the CP doesn’t compete. That’s Sachs 11.

AT Big Mac CP

Perm do both.

The Big Mac Index alone is insufficient. The perm is key. Ross 11 writes56 This month is the 25th anniversary of The Economist’s Big Mac index of purchasing power. Formal Purchasing Power Parity indices measure the cost of a basket of goods, but The Economist’s theory was that a single product, the ubiquitous Big Mac might give equally informative results. Looking at the Big Mac index in conjunction with GDP per head to account for income disparities, should therefore indicate which currencies were overvalued. For years this was the Icelandic krona, until it lost half its value between end Dec 2007 and end Dec 2008. The index used to suggest that the Chinese yuan was overvalued, but now reckons the valuation to be about right. However, the current index suggests the Brazilian real is overvalued. http://econ.st/pVSOSg. Food for thought. Sorry. Not as bad as the mac-roeconomic pun above though. I wonder how long the Big Mac might be an effective single product for such an index however – you need something which is pervasive, not likely to go out of fashion, and not heavily influenced by other factors. Water shortages or other environmental concerns (raising beef is very costly in terms of natural resources), and health policies (taxes on fast food) could conceivably raise the price of a Big Mac significantly and variably in different countries.

56 Louise Ross (Louise Ross lives and breathes management accounting, as she is both a CIMA member and employed as a technical specialist by CIMA. She sincerely believes management accounting to be “the interesting bit” of accounting. Granted, her experience of other areas is limited to a few years in the lower reaches of public sector audit - two decades ago!). “Mac-roeconomic indicators.” Accounting Web. September 9th, Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Sentimentalism NC

1. TURN – EP is based on sentiments like empathy. Studies prove they begin with childhood. Muller et al 9 writes57

Kals, Schumacher, and Montada (1999) suggested that affinity toward nature can best be described as an emotion that develops through experiences with nature during childhood. Their construct is constituted from four aspects of this emotion: Love of nature, feelings of freedom in nature, feelings of security in nature, and feelings of oneness with nature. From a psychological point of view, the relationship between humans and nature is more than a rational one, as it is—similarly to social attitudes—also based on affective experiences and behavior (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). They showed that this emotional affinity is more closely related to environmentally relevant commitment and behavior than mere cognitive interest in nature. From a theoretical point of view, the findings can be interpreted as similar to pro-social behavior which some researchers have explained as based on the emotional reaction of empathy with a person in need (e.g., Batson et al., 1997). In this line of thought, studies in environmental psychology have shown that taking the perspective of threatened animals or plants can instigate concerns about the state of nature (Zelezny, 1999; Schultz, 2000).

2. Extinction first. It precludes all sentiments and would make people sad.

3. TURN – Humans have multiple strong emotive reactions in favor of nature. Rolston 79 writes58 I. Passion in the Natural Environment. Human emotions have their richest development in a social environment, and many emotions are known only there, such as jealousy or embarrassment. But emotions have a fundamental, "native" expression before the natural world, as with the shudder when staring into the starry night, or the quickened pulse on a balmy spring day. The tears of joy at birth and those of grief at death, though interpersonal, also flow as nature gives and takes away. Goose pimples sometimes rise when persons sing, "America, the Beautiful!" The physiological reaction is to a national heritage, but also before purple mountains' majesties and the fruited plains stretched from sea to shining sea. Emotions are humane occasions, and some slip into the belief that they only properly obtain between persons, as when disgusted with, a sister. But persons do not, or ought not, to curse rocks. They may "give way" to emotions in I-Thou relations, but I-It experiences should be passionless. This view is a mistake, for our encounter with nature is as passionate as it is cognitive. This calls for an ecology of the emotions. At this point, some reply that emotions in primitive man were directed against nature in animism and superstition, but that modern persons have grown out of it. Ecology is not emotional; it is scientific. That is not entirely so; our argument here is rather that these passions have taken a more calculating form. If we consider Newton and his mechanistic universe, Darwin and his jungle, Marx with his dialectic of man laboring against nature, an existentialist in despair before an absurd world, a technologist craving for dominion over nature, or the ecologist rediscovering his earthen home, fearful of its destruction, we will see that our contemporary thinking often has an understory of concern that is environmental.

4. No impact to moral motivation in the context of government. It’s not an agent with motivation.

57 Markus M. Müller (Social and Organizational Psychology, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany), Elisabeth Kals (Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany) and Ramune Pansa (University of Kassel, Germany). “Adolescents’ Emotional Affinity toward Nature: A Cross-Societal Study.” The Journal of Developmental Processes. 2009. http://www.psych.utah.edu/people/people/fogel/jdp/journals/6/journal06-06.pdf 58 Holmes Roston III (Colorado State University). “Nature and Human Emotions.” Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Thomas W. Attig, eds., Understanding Human Emotions, Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy, Volume I - 1979, Bowling Green, Ohio: The Applied Philosophy Program, 1979. Pages 89-96. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hrolston/nature-human-emotions.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

5. TURN – Humans have a natural affinity for landscapes. Rolston 79 writes59

III. Emotions of Continuity: The Nature We Embrace and Love. That we can be upset when lost depends upon a baseline emotion of being at home. Our homes are cultural places in their construction, but what we add again is that there is a natural foundation, a sense of belongingness to the landscape. For all those boundaries which we defend against the external world, our emotions are not confined to those of separateness, but we know the bitter with the sweet, the rose with its thorns. Is this sheer ambivalence, or can we redescribe that opposition under a larger ecology? The American settlers found that they had no sooner conquered a wilderness than they had come to love a land. Theirs was a promised land, even though they fought for it, nor are these biblical allusions incidental. After the conquest, there was time to rejoice in the sunshine and the rain, in seedtime and harvest, in peaks and prairies, in the orchard in bloom, in the smell of the new-mown hay. "We know we belong to the land, and the land we belong to is grand!"3 Millions learned that chorus, sung in voices not less rousing as it was transposed from Oklahoma to Iowa or the Sierras, though it may not be incidental that it was sung first in the Indian territories. But East or West, and not only transcontinentally but globally, we have never far to seek for such emotional satisfactions. Few persons want their environments without landscaping, without trees and grass, flowers and gardens, lakes and sky. Of those drawn to the city for livelihood or security, the vastest portion elect the suburbs so as to remain also near the country, in some place not consummately urban, but where there is more green than anything else, where, with the neighbors, there are fencerows and cardinals, dogwoods and rabbits. For most Americans the ideal life is not so much urban as it is "town and country." We cherish our hills of home, our rivers, our bays, our country drives. Most of us identify so with some countryside that we get a lump in the throat when we must leave it, or when we return after an absence. We have deep affections toward persons and communities, but our affections toward the city, per se, are usually exceeded by those which we have towards the landscape. The notion of evolved fittedness includes congeniality, as well as opposition, but Darwin never quite said this. Nature is not a home ready to hand and we must live in what psychologists call "built environments," urban and rural. Yet this is subtended by the earthen life-support system of which we have again become so aware, and these connections are not only biophysical, they are psychological. If we are emotionally built so as to draw together socially against nature, we also are emotionally built so as to be attracted to skies and plains, pets and flowers, mountains and beaches, waterfalls and meadows. Some may say that this is just a matter of taste and frills, but we have to add that such matters, especially those that influence our moods of well-being and upset, not only have a significant psychological reality but even reveal truth about the world. Why should we ever have evolved the aesthetic sense, if it but makes us freaks of nature? Our emotions defend the organic self, but they also stretch it out to integrate it into its place.

6. No impact to moral semantics. If the common usage of “morality” was defined as “genocide”, that wouldn’t make it good. Language doesn’t guide action.

7. TURN – We have sentiments that value nature since we arose from it. Rolston 79 writes60

Nature is the bosom whence we come and go, and we here want to put in place those emotions that gather round the name "Mother Nature," even if one can make out no Father God, those emotions which Freud thought so misplaced. These emotions cheer for the natural parenting, for those generative, sustentative energies of this earthen home, productive forces strikingly present in the only nature we know in any complexity and detail. Life is something nature hands us, and, given these brains and hands, genes and blood chemistries, life remains nine parts natural for every one part it becomes artificial. We are born clean of culture, for any culture can be emplaced in any newborn, though we are not humanized without such education. But we are not born clean of nature, and in any cultural education we do ill to neglect those emotions which are native to this birth. We are born to die, but it is life rather than death which is the principal mystery that comes out of nature, and our emotions are stirred proportionately. The myth of Antaeus is true: man is an invincible wrestler, but loses his strength if he takes both feet from his mother earth. Adam lost his Eden when he spurned it, and fell into labor and pain. Human emotions fit us for defending the self, aloft and transcendent over nature, but they ought still the more to fit us to that natural environment which transcends us. These are emotions that we all live by, but they are emotions that some of us live for.

59 Holmes Roston III (Colorado State University). “Nature and Human Emotions.” Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Thomas W. Attig, eds., Understanding Human Emotions, Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy, Volume I - 1979, Bowling Green, Ohio: The Applied Philosophy Program, 1979. Pages 89-96. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hrolston/nature-human-emotions.pdf 60 Holmes Roston III (Colorado State University). “Nature and Human Emotions.” Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Thomas W. Attig, eds., Understanding Human Emotions, Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy, Volume I - 1979, Bowling Green, Ohio: The Applied Philosophy Program, 1979. Pages 89-96. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hrolston/nature-human-emotions.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

8. Rationality is the natural aspiration of human beings. We’re motivated to act morally, not emotionally. Korsgaard 2 writes61

C.M.K.: I would not quite say that the account of moral motivation only works if we assume that people are rational. Rather, I would say that there is a descriptive sense in which people have no choice but to be rational and to act on reasons of some kind. Rationality in this descriptive sense is forced upon us by the fact that we are self- conscious beings and can act on our incentives only if we take them to be reasons. So there is no question of acting rationally versus not acting rationally. There is only a question whether our reasons are good ones or bad ones, whether we are rational in a normative sense. (And of course there is the precedent question whether we can derive some standard for reasons being good or bad ones, such as the Formula of Humanity in the argument I described before.) So I don’t think that I am [not] making a strong presupposition of rationality in the normative sense. It is more a thesis in moral psychology.

9. Use extinction as a meta-standard to resolve moral uncertainty. Bostrom 1 writes62

These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest[s] an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk. Let me elaborate. Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. [ that] We may not now know—at least not in concrete detail—what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity ; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving—and ideally improving—our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value.

10. Gut check aff if you like EP. Under her framework, you can’t be wrong.

11. Sentimentalism fails for policymakers; can’t calculate emotions accurately. Steinberg and Piquero 8 write63 It is generally accepted that intense public concern about the threat of youth crime has driven this trend, and that the public supports this legislative inclination toward increased punitiveness. But it is not clear whether this view of the public’s attitude about the appropriate response to juvenile crime is accurate. On the one hand, various opinion surveys have found public support generally for getting tougher on juvenile crime and punishing youths as harshly as their adult counterparts. At the same time, however, scrutiny of the sources of information about public opinion reveals that the view that the public supports adult punishment of juveniles is based largely on either responses to highly publicized crimes such as school shootings or on mass opinion polls that typically ask a few simplistic questions. It is quite plausible that assessments of public sentiment about juvenile crime, and the appropriate response to it, vary greatly as a function of when and how public opinion is gauged. In our own work, we have found that very slight variations in the wording of survey questions generate vastly different pictures of public attitudes about juvenile justice policy. An assessment of the public’s support for various responses to juvenile offending is important because policy makers often justify expenditures for punitive juvenile justice reforms on the basis of popular demand.

61 Christine M. Korsgaard (Professor of Philosophy at Harvard). Internalism and the Sources of Normativity. Constructions of Practical Reason: Interviews on Moral and Political Philosophy, edited by Herlinde Pauer-Studer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002) http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~korsgaar/CPR.CMK.Interview.pdf 62 Nick Bostrom, 2001 prof of Philosophy, Oxford University [ Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9, March 2002. First version: 2001 March, JStor 63 (Rehabilitation Versus Incarceration Of Juvenile Offenders: Public Preferences In Four Models Of Change States. Alex Piquero, Professor Of Criminal Justice At John Jay College. and Laurence Steinberg, Professor Of Psychology At Temple University., 2008. ) Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

12. Util is axiomatic. Harris 10 writes64

So, while it is possible to say that one can't move from "is" to "ought," we should be honest about how we get to "is" in the first place. Scientific "is" statements rest on implicit "oughts" all the way down. When I say, "Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen," I have uttered a quintessential statement of scientific fact. But what if someone doubts this statement? I can appeal to data from chemistry, describing the outcome of simple experiments. But in so doing, I implicitly appeal to the values of empiricism and logic. What if my interlocutor doesn't share these values? What can I say then? What evidence could prove that we should value evidence? What logic could demonstrate the importance of logic? As it turns out, these are the wrong questions. The right question is, why should we care what such a person thinks in the first place? So it is with the linkage between morality and well-being: To say that morality is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that the well-being of conscious creatures is good, is exactly like saying that science is arbitrary (or culturally constructed, or merely personal), because we must first assume that a rational understanding of the universe is good. We need not enter either of these philosophical cul-de-sacs.

TURN – We have strong sentiments that value the environment which start with childhood. Rolston 79 writes65

In an analysis of the autobiographies of three hundred geniuses, Edith Cobb concluded that they characteristically recall from their middle childhood a period "when the natural world is experienced in some highly evocative way, producing in the child a sense of profound continuity with natural processes." It is to this encounter that, in the creativity of their adult years, "these writers say they return in memory in order to renew the power and impulse to create at its very source, a source which they describe as the experience of emerging not only into the light of consciousness but into a living sense of dynamic relationship with the outer world. In these memories the child appears to experience both a sense of discontinuity, an awareness of his own unique separateness and identity, and also a continuity, a renewal of relationship with nature as process."4 We are genetically prepared for this exchange with nature, yet it is so innovative that each individual becomes virtually a species in itself. The child is exalted by a rediscovery of those powers of autonomous agency in which the race has evolved, but the dominant impulse is a sense of immanence in the natural process, more relational than oppositional, more romance than tragedy. To finger a stick, to throw rocks into the creek, to build a fire, to run with a dog across a field, to watch the sparrows—all awaken a sense of wonder at both the natural drama and the part the person is permitted to play in it. Nature is a foil for the self, yet so diversely so across the many cultures and centuries of these geniuses that any environmental determinism is discredited and replaced with an environmental reciprocity. In his autobiography, Carl Jung recalls being gripped in early childhood by the large stones in his family garden, and returning there to regain those emotions in his adult years. With advancing age, he developed an intricate symbolic relationship with the stone "Tower," a rustic house which he himself built by stages on the scenic upper lake of Zurich. In this rural place, he writes, "I am in the midst of my true life, I am most deeply myself. ... At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons. There is nothing in the Tower that has not grown into its own form over the decades, nothing with which I am not linked. ...Silence surrounds me almost audibly, and I live 'in modest harmony with nature.'" Later, in retrospect, he concluded, "The world into which we are born is brutal and cruel, and at the same time of divine beauty. Which element we think outweighs the other, whether meaninglessness or meaning is a matter of temperament. ... I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle. ... There is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things."5

64 Harris, Sam (NYT Bestselling author, BA in phil from Stanford, PhD in neuroscience from UCLA). Toward a Science of Morality. HuffPo. 7 May 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/a-science-of-morality_b_567185.html 65 Holmes Roston III (Colorado State University). “Nature and Human Emotions.” Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Thomas W. Attig, eds., Understanding Human Emotions, Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy, Volume I - 1979, Bowling Green, Ohio: The Applied Philosophy Program, 1979. Pages 89-96. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hrolston/nature-human-emotions.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT EKC

Environmental Kuznets Curve is wrong. Growth doesn’t solve the environment. Kollmuss and Agyeman 2 write66 The second assumption underlies many other studies and models (e.g. Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs). For example, it is often claimed that people in poorer countries care less about the environment, yet the study by Diekmann and Franzen (1999) shows that the issue is more complicated. Using data from two different surveys they showed that when people from poorer countries are asked to rank the most pressing problems, environmental issues are indeed ranked lower. Yet if the people are asked to rate the severity of different problems, pro- environmental issues always rank high, no matter if the country is af fl uent or poor. Ranking therefore reflects more the reality of scarce economic resources and not the lack of environmental concern of less affluent people. In addition, ‘ecological footprinting’ (Wackernagel & Rees, 1997) and similar measures of resource consumption, such as ‘environmental space’ (McLaren et al., 1998) show clearly that richer nations have a far greater negative environmental impact than poorer nations. This of course does not mean that poorer nations limit their ecological footprint out of environmental concern but it does show that more affl uence does not lead to more ecological behavior (for an additional example see also endnote 4).

66 Anja Kollmuss and Julian Agyeman (Tufts University). “Mind the Gap: why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior?” Environmental Education Research. 2002. https://www.d.umn.edu/~kgilbert/educ5165- 731/pwreadings/Mind%20Gap.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Sovereignty NC

No link to sovereignty. Agreements of developing countries and ILaw prove. And, sovereignty devolves to util. Barbieri 9 writes67

Chapter 4 has stressed that the practice of signing BITs provides further evidence that currently most States (even developing countries) do not mean sovereignty over natural resources as an absolute right. In fact, when they enter into BITs, States agree to get obliged to ensure higher standards of protection for foreign investors, and this implies the partial dismissal of the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources as provided for in the radical formulation of the Charter of economic rights and duties of States. Chapter 5 identifies another limitation for States to the exercise of the right to sovereignty over natural resources. In fact, as sovereignty over natural resources is a right of people as well, when States use and control natural resources in their territory, they have the obligation to do so with the aim to improve the wellbeing of their people. It should be noted that in the last decades sovereignty over natural resources has been limited even further by the evolution of international environmental law. At the base of this trend there is the increasing concern about the protection of the environment and the awareness that pollution and other environmental damages do not only affect the States in whose territory they occur, but also the World as a whole. For this reason States have the duty to refrain from using their natural resources in a way which can damage their neighbours and the World environment in general. These principles are contained in particular in the Stockholm Declaration of 1972 and in the Rio Declaration of 1992. Principle 21 of Stockholm Declaration and principle 2 of Rio Declaration (which are identical) affirm that “States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies” but at the same time they have “the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction and control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.” More in general, sovereignty over natural resources must be exercised respecting the principles of sustainable development, also according to principle of Rio Declaration which provides: “the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations”. Therefore, the concept of sustainable development would attempt to reconcile the right to development (and the related right to sovereignty over natural resources) with the protection of the environment and the principle of inter-generational equity.

67 Michele Barbieri (PhD candidate, Università Bocconi. Teaching and research assistant, Università degli Studi di Milano). “Developing Countries And Their Natural Resources. From The Elaboration Of The Principle Of Permament Sovereignty Over Natural Resources To The Creation Of Sovereign Wealth Funds.” 2009. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT China Sulfate CP

Defense

Sulfate particles won’t last long in Chinese air. Science Daily 13 writes68

May 14, 2013 — The life span of cloud-forming sulfate particles in the air is shorter than had been assumed due to a sulfur dioxide oxidation pathway which has been neglected in climate models so far. Sulfur dioxide is as antagonist of greenhouse gases less effective than previously assumed. It forms sulfate aerosol particles in the air, which reflect sunlight, and as so-called cloud condensation nuclei influence the chemical processes within clouds. Therefore, sulfate aerosol particles help to cool Earth, making them an important factor in climate models. However, a team around researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry found out that it is likely most models overestimate the cooling effect of these particles. The reason is a largely disregarded reaction pathway catalysed by mineral dust within clouds, which has a strong influence on the life span of sulfate aerosol particles and their ability to reflect sunlight. In their role as condensation nuclei, aerosol particles are an important trigger for the formation of clouds. As humidity accumulates on the particles droplets are formed, which later develop into clouds. Within the clouds, however, the chemical composition of these aerosol particles changes. In order to find out exactly what happens within the clouds, Eliza Harris and Bärbel Sinha from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, together with other scientists form Mainz and further research institutes, investigated different air parcels. The special feature of their experiments was that they investigated a cloud which formed on top of a mountain. The scientists could therefore trace how the aerosol particles changed while the cloud was forming. Eliza Harris' main focus was the analysis of sulfur compounds. She investigated their composition in air samples which were collected at different times: Before the parcels entered the cloud, while they were in the cloud, and after they left the cloud. The sulfur compounds in the samples differed in the distribution of sulfur isotopes. Isotopes are atoms of the same elements differing in the number of neutrons in the core and thus can be differentiated with the help of a mass spectrometer. The NanoSIMS ion microprobe, a highly sensitive mass spectrometer, enabled Harris to look into the chemical processes. "The relative reaction rates of isotopes are like fingerprints, which tell us how the sulfate was formed from the sulfur dioxide," Eliza Harris explains her method, which was part of her doctoral research in the group of Peter Hoppe at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Harris' measurements showed that sulfate in clouds forms mostly through the oxidation of sulfur dioxide (SO2) by oxygen (O2). This reaction is catalysed by so-called transition metal ions (TMI) like iron, manganese, titanium or chromium. In addition, sulfate production mostly occurred in cloud droplets which formed on large mineral dust particles, the most important source of transition metal ions. Much less often the trail led to the oxidation of SO2 by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and ozone (O3). "As my colleagues and I compared the basic assumptions of climate models with my results we were very surprised, because only one of twelve models considers the role of transition metal ions in the formation of sulfate," says the scientist, who is now working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA. Instead, most of the models used the alternative pathways of sulfur dioxide oxidation by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), ozone (O3) and the hydroxyl radical (OH). Sulfate produced catalytically through transition metal ions are formed on relatively large mineral dust particles, mak[e]ing them bigger than those formed through the reaction with hydrogen peroxide. Due to their size, they fall from the air at a faster rate -- by force of gravity. The time frame for climate cooling by sulfate particles could therefore be shorter than has been believed. Eliza Harris assumes that the models have overestimated the climate cooling effect of sulfate aerosols. So far it is not quantifiable to what degree Harris' discovery will impact climate prognoses. However, future models should consider the TMI catalysis reaction as an important pathway for the oxidation of sulfur dioxide, says the scientist. She thinks that the impact on climate models of European regions might probably be low, as mineral dust concentrations in the air are small and sulfur dioxide (SO2)emissions are declining. "In India and China, however, where sulfur dioxide emissions are expected to rise in the near future, combined with significantly higher concentrations of mineral dust in the air, the effect could be stronger," assumes Harris. Future studies will show.

68 Science Daily. “Sulfate Aerosols Cool Climate Less Than Assumed.” May 14th, 2013. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130514085309.htm Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Indo-China War/US-China War DA

Aerosols destabilize the Indian monsoon. Wang 13 writes69

The impact of aerosols, particularly absorbing aerosols, on the Indian summer monsoon has become a recent research focus, represented by rapidly increasing publications in literature (Ramanathan et al., 2001; Chung et al., 2002; Ramanathan et al., 2005; Lau et al., 2006, 2008; Meehl et al., 2008; Randles and Ramaswamy, 2008; Wang et al., 2009b; Collier and Zhang, 2009; Krishnamurti et al., 2009; Manoj et al., 2010; Ganguly et al., 2012a, 2012b; Shindell et al., 2012; among others). All these analyses come to a conclusion that the forcing of anthropogenic absorbing aerosols over the Indian subcontinent particularly during the premonsoon season (normally May to June, corresponding to the start of heavy rainfall over land) is strong enough to cause significant changes in monsoonal rainfall. Averaged over the Indian land area, most studies suggest an aerosol-caused decrease in rainfall during the summer monsoon season and an increase during pre-monsoon and onset seasons. Analyses looking into detailed pattern change found the decrease of rainfall mostly occurs over most of the central and south Indian subcontinent while increasing in other regions such as northwestern India. Additionally, these aerosol-caused changes in the monsoonal circulation could further affect other dynamical features, e.g., tropical cyclone intensity over nearby Arabian Sea as suggested by a recent study of Evan et al. (2011). Opinions to explain these results differ, however, because of the viewpoints emphasized on different driving factors of the monsoon system. Ramanathan et al. (2005) emphasized on the dimming (surface cooling) effects of anthropogenic absorbing aerosols and suggested that this effect could decrease the meridional sea surface temperature gradient, one of the driving force of the Indian summer monsoon, and subsequently the surface evaporation. These two factors would reduce the monsoonal circulation and rainfall amount. Lau et al. (2006) proposed to consider the effect of heating by absorbing aerosols on the slope of the Tibetan Plateau, and suggested that such an effect could initiate a positive feedback by drawing water convergence from oceans first and then form condensation and thus further heat the air over these elevated places. Wang et al. (2009b) looked into the large-scale stability issue driving the monsoon system and indicated that anthropogenic absorbing aerosols, acting alone or together with scattering aerosols, can alter the meridional gradient of moist static energy (MSE) in the sub-cloud layer over the Indian subcontinent. This changes the large-scale atmospheric stability that drives the deep convection in particular during onset period and forces a north- and northwestward shift of convection and associated heavy rainfall, which is coincidently in general agreement with the observed monsoon precipitation changes in recent decades. As the new simulations include not only the direct but also indirect effects of aerosols, precipitation pattern change becomes even more complicated, for example, Ganguly et al. (2012a) suggest that the indirect effect brought mainly by water-soluble anthropogenic aerosols (mostly scattering in their configuration) would enhance the surface cooling effect through cloud radiation changes due to an increase in cloud droplet number concentration.

69 Chien Wang (from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change). “Impact of anthropogenic absorbing aerosols on clouds and precipitation: A review of recent progresses.” Atmospheric Research, 122: 237-249. 2013. http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC_Reprint_13-2.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Indian monsoon instability causes IndoChina war, and the counter-plan independently causes US-China war.

Boyd and Hamilton 13 write70

I’m sure if China did go down the geoengineering path it would try to present its actions as motivated by the need to protect the interests of vulnerable people across the developing world. The critical question is how divergent would be the effects of any major geoengineering scheme on different regions of the world. And if sulphate aerosol spraying for example did destabilise the Indian monsoon, then I think it could lead to serious conflict between China and India. On the other hand, China might be able to secure the backing of the small island states. They aren’t advocating geoengineering now, but if we see a strong surge in warming – which we may well do at some point in the next 10 years or so – the level of desperation in small island states may reach a point where they say some kind of radical intervention is necessary to ensure our survival and they might welcome China intervening. One of the nightmare scenarios would be if China launched a geoengineering scheme and the US, for example, decided to retaliate to counter the effects of China’s actions. That would be disastrous. You can imagine the extraordinary risks we would be taking when we turn the global climate system into a theatre of war, but that’s one of the scenarios being mooted by strategic experts. OB: You talk about the connections between the military and geoengineering – what are the implications? CH: It’s the military organisations of major powers that have the equipment and the wherewithal to engage in a programme of, for example, sulphate aerosol spraying. So I think with that kind of geoengineering it’s almost inevitable that the military will be involved to some level. Or, if a single nation decides to lime the oceans [adding lime to seawater is said to be able to boost its capacity to absorb carbon dioxide], bearing in mind they would be setting out to transform the chemical composition of all of the oceans, then you’ve got ships from one nation sailing the seas, spreading the lime. You have a major marine operation going on and you would expect the navy to have a watching brief over that. This is all speculative, but these are possibilities.

70 Olivia Boyd (journalist and editor based in London. Her work has appeared in publications including China's Southern Weekend, The Ecologist and Building magazine, where she was formerly senior reporter. Olivia studied Chinese at Oxford University) and Clive Hamilton (professor of public ethics at Australia’s Charles Sturt University and a prominent critic of geoengineering). “China could move first to geoengineer the climate.” China Dialogue. April 30th, 2013. https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5952-China-could-move-first-to-geoengineer-the-climate Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

IndoChina war goes nuclear.

Caryl 12 writes71

China and India have built up a $60-billion-per-year trading relationship, and for years they've insisted that they want to work more closely on a variety of fronts. Yet that expressed desire for collaboration co-exists uneasily with a long-running strategic rivalry. Parts of their mutual border remain in dispute. China has long supported Pakistan, India's main enemy, while the Indians have often befriended competitors of the Chinese (be it Moscow or Washington). Lately Beijing has been cultivating relationships among countries in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean -- including Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka -- to protect the flow of commerce and access to supplies of natural resources. That has the Indians fearing encirclement. Lately, though, another element is threatening to complicate the strategic calculus: the nuclear factor. In themselves, of course, nuclear weapons are nothing new to either country. China has been a nuclear power for decades, while India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974 (though most outsiders tend to think of 1998, when New Delhi conducted a series of underground explosions designed to establish its bona fides as a genuine nuclear power). Although both countries have sworn off first use, both have built up formidable deterrents designed to retaliate against any attackers. So what's new? A lot. Concurrent with their rising economic might, China and India have set about modernizing their militaries to lend extra muscle to their growing strategic ambitions -- and given their complicated history, that can't help but spark worries. "China has the most active and diverse ballistic missile development program in the world," noted one U.S. report. "China's ballistic missile force is expanding in both size and types of missiles." China's Dongfeng long-range missiles boast independently controlled multiple warheads, mobility, and solid fuel (meaning that they can be fired with little notice). That's just one of many areas in which the Chinese have demonstrated their advanced technological capabilities. In January China shot down one of its own satellites with a missile -- once again demonstrating, as it did with a previous test in 2007, that it's well down the path toward a ballistic missile defense system. That test unnerved the Indians, who saw the prospect of Chinese space weapons as a potential threat to the credibility of their own nuclear deterrent. The Indians, meanwhile, have been hard at work on a new generation of long-range missiles of their own. The Agni-5, which is set for a test flight by the end of this year, has a projected range of 5,000 to 6,000 kilometers -- meaning that it would be able to hit even the northernmost of China's cities. The Indians are also conducting sea trials of their first ballistic missile submarine, the Arihant, which could be ready for deployment within another year or two. It is undoubtedly true that the two countries mainly have other potential enemies in mind. China is primarily concerned about deterring potential attacks by the world's leading nuclear power, the United States, while India's strategic calculations focus on the threat from Pakistan. Yet strategic logic is creating the potential for direct friction between Beijing and New Delhi on several fronts. The two countries are already engaged in a naval arms race as they jockey for influence in the waters around South Asia. Tensions have also been mounting over the two countries' border disputes -- especially the one involving the disputed area of Arunachal Pradesh (which is controlled by the Indians). The Indians complain of a rising number of Chinese incursions into the area; a remark by the Chinese ambassador to India a few years ago, when he claimed the territory as China's, stirred up public outrage. The Chinese, who regard Arunachal Pradesh as part of Tibet, worry in turn about a buildup of Indian troops in the region. Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi notes one concern. Starting in 2007, the Chinese military began a major upgrade of its missile base near the city of Delingha in Qinghai province, next to Tibet. In addition to the intermediate-range missiles already stationed in the region, Rajagopalan says there are indications the Chinese may have beefed up the force with long-range DF-31s and DF-31As -- thus threatening not only northern India, including Delhi, but targets in the south as well. It's entirely possible, she acknowledges in a 2007 paper, that the Chinese move could be aimed primarily at countering Russian missiles stationed in Siberia, but warns that "what the Chinese may consider a routine exercise may send a wrong signal and have serious implications." For his part, former U.S. diplomat Charles Freeman says that he regards Indian fears of a Chinese nuclear buildup as exaggerated, but worries that a fateful mismatch of perceptions could already be spurring both countries toward a genuine nuclear arms race. The extent to which the two militaries are getting on each other's nerves became apparent in a bit of high-ranking trash-talking earlier this year. India's chief military science officer, V.K. Saraswat, declared that new advances in his country's ballistic missile technology meant that "as far as cities in China and Pakistan are concerned, there will be no target that we want to hit but can't hit." That prompted a retort from Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong of China's National Defense University, who pointedly derided the "low level" of Indian technology. "In developing its military technology," Zhang said, "China has never taken India as a strategic rival, and none of its weapons were specifically designed to contain India." If that was meant to console anyone south of the border, it doesn't seem to have worked. The best time to talk about an arms race, of course, is before it really gathers steam. Krishnaswami Subrahmanyam, former chairman of India's National Security Advisory Board, says that China and India should take their nuclear concerns to the Conference on Disarmament, a multilateral negotiating forum at the United Nations. But that, of course, would require the Chinese to acknowledge that there's a problem, which they might not be willing to do. Rajagopalan notes that India and Pakistan have managed to set up some effective confidence-building measures on their common border, but that India and China have yet to do the same (aside from a few stillborn efforts in the early 1990s). Instituting mechanisms to warn each other of pending missile tests might be a start. "I think there's a great need for that," she says. "Otherwise these kinds of tensions can spiral out of control." You can say that again.

71 Christian Caryl (senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, contributing editor at The National Interest, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). “Don’t Even Think About It.” Foreign Policy. March 2nd, 2012. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/13/dont_even_think_about_it#sthash.35tgWZJQ.bBxKNYTH.dpbs Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

US-China war goes nuclear.

Kulacki 12 writes72

Last week two separate studies warned that China and the United States are pursuing military strategies and implementing defense policies that could lead to a nuclear war. John Lewis and Xue Litai of Stanford University concluded a detailed exposition of China's nuclear war plans with a very sober warning. " Both sides , clinging to incongruous assessments, run the risk of provoking unanticipated escalation to nuclear war by seeking a quick victory or tactical advantages in a conventional conflict. This dilemma is not only real, but perilous." Thomas Christensen of Princeton expressed concern about the same problem; the possibility that a conventional military conflict between the United States and China could end in a nuclear exchange. "For example, if strikes by the United States on China's conventional coercive capabilities or their critical command and control nodes and supporting infrastructure were to appear in Beijing as a conventional attack on its nuclear retaliatory capability or as a precursor to a nuclear first strike, even a China that generally adheres to a No-First-Use posture might escalate to the nuclear level." Neither study suggests that the military or political leadership of China or the United States intends to resort to nuclear weapons in the event of a military conflict. China's commitment not to be the first to use nuclear weapons "at any time under any circumstances" is drilled into the officers and soldiers of China's strategic missile forces. A classified text used to train those forces, The Science of Second Artillery Operations, unambiguously instructs, "In accord with our national principle not to be the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances, the Second Artillery's strategic nuclear forces can carry out a retaliatory nuclear attack against the enemy, following the command of the 'high leadership,' only after the enemy has first attacked us with nuclear weapons." Although the United States is unwilling to make a similar commitment, U.S. superiority in conventional weapons and overall military capabilities makes it unlikely the United States would consider using nuclear weapons for any purpose other than preventing a Chinese nuclear attack on the United States. The most recent U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, in an effort to deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense policy, declared that the "fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons...is to deter a nuclear attack on the United States, our allies and partners." The risk of a nuclear war with China lies in the potential for misunderstanding or miscommunication during a conventional conflict. China's current strategy for employing its conventional and nuclear missile forces during a future conflict with the United States is self-consciously designed to create uncertainty, with the expectation that uncertainty will restrain U.S. military action. Unfortunately, China's strategy could also precipitate a large-scale U.S. attack on China's missile forces. There are several Chinese military policies that might confuse U.S. decision-makers in a time of war. Some Chinese conventional missiles are located on the same missile bases as Chinese nuclear missiles. Some Chinese missiles, particularly the DF-21, can be armed with either a conventional or a nuclear warhead. Chinese conventional war plans call for long-range "strategic" conventional missile strikes at key enemy targets, including U.S. military bases on allied soil and the continental United States. If this were not confusing enough already, The Science of Second Artillery Operations contains a section on "lowering the nuclear threshold" that details procedures for alerting China's nuclear forces in a crisis for the express purpose of forcing a halt to an enemy's conventional attacks on a select group of targets, such as Chinese nuclear power plants, large dams and civilian population centers. Although the Science of Second Artillery Operations unambiguously states that if alerting China's nuclear missile forces fails to halt conventional enemy attacks China will hold firm to its "no first use" commitment, U.S. decision-makers might not believe it. Indeed, U .S. interlocutors have repeatedly told their Chinese counterparts that they do not find China's "no first use" pledge credible. The combination of these factors makes a nuclear exchange between the United States and China not only plausible, but also probable if the two countries were to become embroiled in a military conflict. As Lewis and Xue explain, "If, in a time of high tension, the Chinese command authorized a conventional missile attack as an act of preemptive self-defense, the enemy and its allies could not know if the incoming missiles were conventional or nuclear. In a worst-case scenario, a Chinese first-strike conventional attack could spark retaliation that destroys Chinese nuclear assets, creating a situation in which escalation to full-scale nuclear war would not just be possible, but even likely." The Obama administration is "rebalancing" U.S. military forces in response to perceived relative increases in Chinese military capabilities. China sees this so-called "pivot" to Asia, especially when pared with new U.S. military strategies such as "Air-Sea Battle," as a policy of containment. Both sides downplay the risks of conflict, but they also see each other as potential adversaries, and are hedging their diplomatic bets with expensive investments in new military hardware, including new technologies that will expand the conflict into cyberspace and outer space. Territorial disputes between China and U.S. allies, rising nationalist sentiment in the region, and the potential for domestic political instability within China could produce any number of casussen belli that could trigger the conventional conflict that carries the risk of ending in a nuclear war.

72 Gregory, Senior Analyst & China Project Manager for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “The Risk of Nuclear War with China,” 9/21, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gregory-kulacki/the-risk-of-nuclear-war- w_b_1903336.html Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Imperialism NC

Environmental protection empowers Africans against the Western development paradigm. Multiple warrants.

Natarajan 12 writes73 Indeed it is deeply unfair that Africa, which has contributed least to global environmental problems, should have to concern itself with environmental protection at a time when many struggle with accessing the basics of survival such as drinkable water, food and shelter. However, in recent years, international law advocates for the poor have increasingly re-engaged with environmental issues because, just as the rich receive a disproportionate benefit from exploiting nature, the poor bear a disproportionate burden of scarcity, pollution and environmental crises such as climate change. Globally, dominant development patterns coupled with population growth have led to increased resource consumption and pollution and waste, causing both resource scarcity and ecological crises. As the last remaining pockets of many natural resources exist in poorer parts of the world, and as poorer regions are more vulnerable to ecological crises, IEL is an increasingly strategic site from which vulnerable peoples, and the movements, scholars, and states that represent them, can contest, negotiate, and resist international economic and development paradigms. Today, grassroots social movements are increasingly harnessing environmental issues as an opportune means of challenging fundamental assumptions that underpin capitalism and development[4]. The overriding sustainable development challenge in Africa is poverty eradication,[5] and African states have looked to economic growth for the solution. In the past decade, six African countries were among the world’s ten fastest growing economies[6]. The average growth rate was about the same for Africa and Asia and there is a strong likelihood that Africa will surpass Asia’s growth rate in the next decade[7]. Yet economic growth in Africa has generated significantly less poverty reduction and social benefits than in other developing regions[8]. It has not created enough jobs and inequality has increased[9]. Africa is the only region in the world where poverty has increased both in absolute and relative terms in the last ten years[10]. iii) Continued cycle of domination Just as in the past when Africa’s rich and diverse natural resources attracted colonial powers, today primary products continue to dominate Africa’s export sectors[11]. The value added locally remains minimal compared to the financial gains accruing outside the continent[12]. Some resources such as oil and diamonds have also contributed to conflict. While Africa is well-endowed with fossil fuels, hydropower, uranium, biomass and other renewable energy resources, many Africans do not have access to reliable and affordable energy[13]. Hunger and malnutrition remain pervasive and the spectre of famine continues to haunt millions on a continent with ample agricultural endowments[14]. This is the result of various factors including the global increase of food prices, developed countries’ agricultural subsidies benefiting their own rich producers, and many years of structural adjustment programmes encouraging African governments to repay ballooning debts by diverting resources from food production to cash crop exports[15]. Globally, increasing climate variability, rising costs of fossil fuels, and concerns for future energy and food supplies, has spurred foreign investors and speculators to buy fertile land in Africa. And while foreign acquisition of African land is increasing, transparency about the acquisitions is decreasing[16]. Control over land is crucial for smallholder farmers but they remain highly vulnerable to dispossession and exploitation. This applies particularly to women, who constitute a majority of the agricultural workforce in the region, producing about 80% of the region’s food, yet owning less than 1% of the land on which they work[17]. They, along with children, are the first to suffer the effects of economic downturn, drought, famine and violent conflict. Africa’s economic growth pattern does not bode well for either poverty reduction or environmental protection. The latter has grave consequences for the region’s poor who depend directly on the livelihood support of functioning ecosystems. Environmental degradation causes poverty, hunger, gender inequality, and health problems[18]. The poor also have less capacity to adapt and cope with the increasing onset of ecological crises. Notwithstanding its low greenhouse gas emissions, Africa will be most affected by climate change mainly due to low adaptive capacity in the face of increasing extreme events such as floods and droughts[19]. Persistent loss of biodiversity is also a major problem, caused by expanding agriculture, deforestation, climate change, and desertification[20]. Drought and desertification affect 65% of the population and highly variable rainfall results in uneven distribution of water resources[21]. Thus, for a combination of economic, social and environmental reasons, African peoples have strong incentives to participate in and shape international cooperation on environmental issues.

73 Usha Natarajan (assistant professor at the American University in Cairo's Department of Law and the Centre for Migration and Refugee Studies. She has a multidisciplinary background, with a PhD in international law from the Australian National University, a MA in international law from the United Nations University of Peace and an LLB in Law and a BA in Art History from Monash University). “8: International Environmental Law.” Think Africa Press. November 8th, 2012. http://thinkafricapress.com/international-law-africa/environmental-law Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Evolution NC

1. No link. The aff doesn’t have to defend zero RE, and none of his cards justify doing as much resource extraction as possible.

2. TURN – Natural selection requires prioritizing EP. Klemm 2 writes74 What are we doing wrong? Mostly the problem is destruction of habitat by: industrial pollution mining farming transporting species into habitats where they had not been What are some of the consequences? One billion people in the world have no clean water Two billion people have inadequate sanitation One and a half billion people (mostly in large cities of newly industrialized countries) breath air that is dangerously unhealthy Hundreds of millions of poor farmers struggle to make a living on poor land Whole countries are on the verge of famine People don't like to be ridiculed as "environmental wackos" or "tree huggers." But it is important to care about the environment. Thoughtful people can care about the environment and at the same time see the need to exploit or use nature for resources to satisfy the needs of our species. The human species needs food and water. We need energy. But we also need to protect the ecosystem niches that make survival of our species possible. Beyond that, we need to protect the niches for other species too. Why do niches need protection? It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature. Ecosystems are complicated. We have seen in these lessons that complexity grows as we move up the ladder from cells to organ systems to ecosystems. The history of our attempts to manipulate ecosystems shows that we often make mistakes and fail to see the unintended consequences of our actions. Rich ecosystems are those with many occupied niches. A change in any one niche is likely to affect other niches and their occupant species. Extinction is forever. We don't get a second chance. Environmental hazards are dangerous. Especially our lakes and oceans have become dumping grounds for dangerous chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, oil and refinery products, industrial wastes, and heavy metals). Some of these toxins actually concentrate in food webs, such as mercury in fish. Moral obligation. Our species owes its existence to the living world that we share with other species. We owe the living world a chance to perpetuate the life-creating processes of natural selection, population dynamics, and exchange cycles. We can only pay this debt by protecting the environment. We humans are doing well as a species (see graph below). But our success comes at the expense of other species. The United Nations World Conservation Monitoring Center predicts that 25% of all the earth's species of mammals may become extinct in the next 30 years. Over 10% of the bird species face extinction in that time.

3. Evolution devolves to util. Darwin agrees. Schroeder 5 writes75 The biologization of ethics started with the publication of The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in 1871. In this follow-up to On the Origin of Species, Darwin applied his ideas about evolutionary development to human beings. He argued that humans must have descended from a less highly organized form–in fact, from a “hairy, tailed quadruped … inhabitant of the Old World” (Darwin, 1930: 231). The main difficulty Darwin saw with this explanation is the high standard of moral qualities apparent in humans. Faced with this puzzle, Darwin devoted a large chapter of the book to evolutionary explanations of the moral sense, which he argued must have evolved in two main steps. First, the root for human morality lies in the social instincts (ibid. 232). Building on this claim by Darwin, today’s biologists would explain this as follows. Sociability is a trait whose phylogenetic origins can be traced back to the time when birds “invented” brooding, hatching, and caring for young offspring. To render beings able to fulfill parental responsibilities required social mechanisms unnecessary at earlier stages of evolutionary history. For example, neither amoebae (which reproduce by division) nor frogs (which leave their tadpole-offspring to fend for themselves) need the social instincts present in birds. At the same time as facilitating the raising of offspring, social instincts counterbalanced innate aggression. It became possible to distinguish between “them” and “us” and aim aggression towards individuals that did not belong to one’s group. This behavior is clearly adaptive in the sense of ensuring the survival of one’s family. Second, with the development of intellectual faculties, human beings were able to reflect on past actions and their motives and thus approve or disapprove of others as well as themselves. This led to the development of a conscience which became “the supreme judge and monitor” of all actions (ibid. 235). Being influenced by utilitarianism, Darwin believed that the greatest-happiness principle will inevitably come to be regarded as a standard for right and wrong by social beings with highly evolved intellectual capacities and a conscience. Based on these claims, can Darwin answer the two essential questions in ethics? First, how can we distinguish between good and evil? And second, why should we be good? If all his claims were true, they would indeed support answers to the above questions. Darwin’s distinction between good and evil is identical with the distinction made by hedonistic utilitarians. Darwin accepts the greatest- happiness principle as a standard of right and wrong. Hence, an action can be judged as good if it improves the greatest happiness of the greatest number, by either increasing pleasure or decreasing pain. And the second question–why we should be good–does not pose itself for Darwin with the same urgency as it did, for instance, for Plato (Thrasymachus famously asked Socrates in the Republic why the strong, who are not in need of aid, should accept the Golden Rule as a directive for action). Darwin would say that humans are biologically inclined to be sympathetic, altruistic, and moral as this proved to be an advantage in the struggle for existence (ibid. 141).

74 WR Klemm (Texas A&M University). “Ecosystems.” Module 4 – Environmental Protection. 2002. http://peer.tamu.edu/curriculum_modules/Ecosystems/module_4/whyitmatters.htm 75 Doris Schroeder (Lancaster University, UK). “Evolutionary Ethics.” IEP. Last updated on July 12th, 2005. http://www.iep.utm.edu/evol-eth/ Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

4. Evolution devolves to util. Natural selection confirms that happiness is morally good. Contestabile 1376 The selective advantage of pain Subjective sensations, such as pleasures and pains, are adaptive traits of organisms. So far as we know, there is no fundamental physical reason why pleasure is attached to some circumstances and pains to others. We might have evolved to find the sensation of having a finger caught in a door intensely pleasurable, just as dung-flies may well relish the smell of excrement. On the evolutionary hypothesis, the fact that pleasures are generally associated with beneficial, and pains with detrimental, experiences, is the result of natural selection among random variations: those individuals who happen to have an association of this kind have higher biological fitness than those who have no such association, or the reverse association (No Pain - no Gain by David B.) If individuals with “the capability to feel pain” have a higher biological fitness, then – conversely – those without this capability have a selective disadvantage. Example: People with congenital insensitivity to pain [Nagasako] have a reduced life expectancy. The rare individuals who cannot feel pain fail even to experience discomfort from staying in the same position for long periods. Their unnatural stillness impairs the blood supply to their joints, which then deteriorate. Such pain-free people usually die by early adulthood from tissue damage and infections [Nesse].

5. Fallacy of origin. Just because morality is a product of natural selection doesn’t mean consistency with natural selection is valuable.

6. Extinction turns the case. It’s not evolutionarily advantageous.

76 B. Contestabile. “The Biological Evolution of Pain.” Socrethics. 2013. http://www.socrethics.com/Folder2/Biology.htm#C3 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT LIEs PIC

1. “Less industrialized economies” is awkwardly phrased and can’t solve inferiority. No viable alternative to “developed.”

Thompson 10 writes77

The development crowd is searching for a new replacement. None seems quite apt. Some have moved to talking about the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ divide, but building a regional and financial wall along the equator seems even less acceptable. Emerging, used to describe nations on their way to industrialization, is just a synonym for developing, implying the same lag. Transitioning and transforming can be used to describe countries moving to a free-market approach. But they are sterile substitutes and leave many countries unaccounted. Donaldson’s suggestion, less-industrialized economies, seems overworked and inconvenient, and again raises the question: less than what? Where do we draw the line? The difficulty in finding the proper terminology comes from its unfortunate purpose – dividing the world into two categories. It’s an awkward, potentially unnecessary separation. It divides people and countries into an “us/them” relationship. But it also emphasizes an inarguable reality, and drives discussion on worldwide inequalities. So for now, the debate goes on. Finding that right word might mean understanding why we need one in the first place.

2. Perm do the CP. It’s just a friendly amendment.

Wyler 11 writes78

There are two types of amendments • Friendly: A friendly amendment is proposed by any member of the body and accepted by the original sponsors of the resolution. It is typically used to clarify a point. Upon agreement of all the original sponsors, the change is incorporated into the resolution without a vote of the committee. As all sponsors must concur for an amendment to be friendly, drafters of a resolution should carefully consider whom they accept as co-sponsors. • Unfriendly: An unfriendly amendment is a modification that can be proposed by any member of the body, but does not have the support of all of the sponsors. Unfriendly amendments must be formally submitted to the director in writing with a given number of signatures (this number varies by committee and will be provided by the director during the second committee session). A vote will be taken on all unfriendly amendments to a resolution immediately prior to the vote on the entire resolution. It should be noted that the term 'unfriendly' does not mean that such amendments are intended to degrade or contradict the resolution in anyway. It merely means that the amendment has not received the support of all of the resolution's sponsors. Acceptable amendments may add and/or strike words, phrases or full clauses of a resolution. The addition of new operative clauses is also acceptable. Please note that only operative clauses can be amended. Preambular clauses cannot be changed in any way (except to correct spelling, punctuation or grammar) following formal submission of the resolution to the floor of the committee. Corrections in spelling, punctuation, or grammar in the operative clauses are made automatically as they are brought to the attention of the dais, and do not need to be submitted as official amendments. All amendments, whether friendly or unfriendly, must be presented to the dais and approved prior to the onset of voting procedure. Time permitting, the Director will have amendments printed and distributed to the committee before voting procedure. Otherwise, the Director will read the amendment to the committee before the vote.

77 Christie Thompson. “Eye On: What’s in a Name? The Developing World Debate.” Beyond Profit. December 3rd, 2010. http://beyondprofit.com/eye-on-whats-in-a-name-the-developing-world-debate/ 78 Benjamin Wyler, Universität Bern, “Getting to the Negotiations,” http://www.international- relations.ch/resources/Articles/Getting%20to%20the%20Negotiations%20(small).pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

3. Isolated instances of renaming fail to create change and can’t solve inferiority.

Schram 95 writes79

The deconstruction of prevailing discursive structures helps politicize the institutionalized practices that inhibit alternative ways of constructing social relations.5 Isolated acts of renaming, however, are unlikely to help promote political change if they are not tied to interrogations of the structures that serve as the interpretive context for making sense of new terms.6 This is especially the case when renamings take the form of euphemisms designed to make what is described appear to be consonant with the existing order. In other words, the problems of a politics of renaming are not confined to the left, but are endemic to what amounts to a classic American practice utilized across the political spectrum.7 Homeless, welfare, and family planning provide three examples of how isolated instances of renaming fail in their efforts to make a politics out of sanitizing language. [end page 21] Reconsidering the Politics of Renaming Renaming can do much to indicate respect and sympathy. It may strategically recast concerns so that they can be articulated in ways that are more appealing and less dismissive. Renaming the objects of political contestation may help promote the basis for articulating latent affinities among disparate political constituencies. The relentless march of renamings can help denaturalize and delegitimate ascendant categories and the constraints they place on political possibility. At the moment of fissure, destabilizing renamings have the potential to encourage reconsideration of how biases embedded in names are tied to power relations.8 Yet isolated acts of renaming do not guarantee that audiences will be any more predisposed to treat things differently than they were before. The problem is not limited to the political reality that dominant groups possess greater resources for influencing discourse. Ascendant political economies, such as liberal postindustrial capitalism, whether understood structurally or discursively, operate as institutionalized systems of interpretation that can subvert the most earnest of renamings.9 It is just as dangerous to suggest that paid employment exhausts possibilities for achieving self-sufficiency as to suggest that political action can be meaningfully confined to isolated renamings.10 Neither the workplace nor a name is the definitive venue for effectuating self-worth or political intervention.11 Strategies that accept the prevailing work ethos will continue to marginalize those who cannot work, and increasingly so in a post industrial economy that does not require nearly as large a workforce as its industrial predecessor. Exclusive preoccupation with sanitizing names overlooks the fact that names often do not matter to those who live out their lives according to the institutionalized narratives of the broader political economy, whether it is understood structurally or discursively, whether it is monolithically hegemonic or reproduced through allied, if disparate, practices. What is named is always encoded in some publicly accessible and ascendent discourse. 12 Getting the names right will not matter if the names are interpreted according to the institutionalized insistences of organized society.13 Only when those insistences are relaxed does there emerge the possibility for new names to restructure daily practices. Texts, as it now has become notoriously apparent, can be read in many ways, and they are most often read according to how prevailing discursive structures provide an interpretive context for reading them.14 The meanings implied by new names of necessity [end page 22] overflow their categorizations, often to be reinterpreted in terms of available systems of intelligibility (most often tied to existing institutions). Whereas renaming can maneuver change within the interstices of pervasive discursive structures, renaming is limited in reciprocal fashion. Strategies of containment that seek to confine practice to sanitized categories appreciate the discursive character of social life , but insufficiently and wrongheadedly. I do not mean to suggest that discourse is dependent on structure as much as that structures are hegemonic discourses. The operative structures reproduced through a multitude of daily practices and reinforced by the efforts of aligned groups may be nothing more than stabilized ascendent discourses.15 Structure is the alibi for discourse. We need to destabilize this prevailing interpretive context and the power plays that reinforce it, rather than hope that isolated acts of linguistic sanitization will lead to political change. Interrogating structures as discourses can politicize the terms used to fix meaning, produce value, and establish identity. Denaturalizing value as the product of nothing more than fixed interpretations can create new possibilities for creating value in other less insistent and injurious ways. The discursively/structurally reproduced reality of liberal capitalism as deployed by power blocs of aligned groups serves to inform the existentially lived experiences of citizens in the contemporary postindustrial order.16 The powerful get to reproduce a broader context that works to reduce the dissonance between new names and established practices. As long as the prevailing discursive structures of liberal capitalism create value from some practices, experiences, and identities over others, no matter how often new names are insisted upon, some people will continue to be seen as inferior simply because they do not engage in the same practices as those who are currently dominant in positions of influence and prestige. Therefore, as much as there is a need to reconsider the terms of debate, to interrogate the embedded biases of discursive practices, and to resist living out the invidious distinctions that hegemonic categories impose, there are real limits to what isolated instances of renaming can accomplish.

79 Sanford F., Associate Professor of Political Science at Macalester College, former Visiting Professor at the La Follette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin and Visiting Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, “Discourses of Dependency: The Politics of Euphemism,” Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and The Social Science of Poverty, Published by The University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 0816625778, p. 21-23 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

4. Censorship fails in a debate context, and increases use of the censored term.

Roskowski and Peabody 91 write80

If language "arguments" become a dominant trend, debaters will not change their attitudes. Rather they will manifest their attitudes in non-debate contexts. Under these conditions, the debaters will not have the moderating effects of the critic or the other debaters. Simply put, sexism at home or at lunch is worse than sexism in a debate round because in the round there is a critic to provide negative though not punitive feedback. The publicization effects of censorship are well known. "Psychological studies reveal that whenever the government attempts to censor speech, the censored speech - for that very reason - becomes more appealing to many people" (Strossen 559). These studies would suggest that language which is critiqued by language "arguments" becomes more attractive simply because of the critique. Hence language "arguments" are counterproductive. Conclusion Rodney Smolla offered the following insightful assessment of the interaction between offensive language and language "arguments": The battle against {offensive speech} will be fought most effectively through persuasive and creative educational leadership rather than through punishment and coercion... The sense of a community of scholars, an island of reason and tolerance, is the pervasive ethos. But that ethos should be advanced with education, not coercion. It should be the dominant voice of the university within the marketplace of ideas; but it should not preempt that marketplace. (Smolla 224-225).1 We emphatically concur. It is our position that a debater who feels strongly enough about a given language "argument" ought to actualize that belief through interpersonal conversation rather than through a plea for censorship and coercion. Each debater in a given round has three minutes of cross-examination time during which he or she may engage the other team in a dialogue about the ramifications of the language the opposition has just used. Additionally even given the efficacy of Rich Edwards' efficient tabulation program, there will inevitably be long periods between rounds during which further dialogue can take place.

80 Matthew Roskoski and Joe Peabody. “A Linguistic and Philosophical Critique of Language ‘Arguments,’”. 1991. http://debate.uvm.edu/Library/DebateTheoryLibrary/Roskoski&Peabody-LangCritiques Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Anthro K

The role of the ballot is to endorse the best post-fiat plan. 1. Aff choice. Provides a stasis point which forces the neg to clash. 2. Predictable limits. There’s unlimited roles of the ballot and kritik alts. Topic focus is the only way to create a limited lit base which makes research possible. 3. Time skew. His framework moots the AC and forces a 1AR restart.

These all turn education claims because they’re pre-requisites to effective dialogue.

Topic education outweighs. EP is undervalued now. Babb 14 writes81 We’re actually not all that committed to environmentalism Though it’s fundamentally beyond the scope of this small contribution, there’s probably something to be said about our underlying attitudes toward the environment. Whether we admit it or not, we are children of a very developed world. We enjoy the products of environmentally-tainted production on a daily basis. Our economy and freedom of movement are premised on a series of planet-dirtying practices. On some level, that has to affect our willingness to tell the story of environmentalism, to re-issue the edicts that publicly temper our very real commitments to development. We’re all aware of what’s happening to the environment, but we’re only sometimes willing to do very much about it. The difference between the Right and Left on this point is far more a function of ideology than output. Despite the stark disagreements between the two sides, there remains a nearly universal unwillingness to seriously alter our daily routines on behalf of the environment. What little we do is often done for us by corporations steered by consumer choice. Indeed, the most effort we typically exert on behalf of the environment is choosing one brand over another. So maybe it shouldn’t be all that surprising that debaters are choosing strategy over the environment. The topic has given our community a ready-made soapbox for the reaffirmation of the environmentalist creed.

81 Stephen Babb (coaches for Harvard Westlake). “What Happened to Environmentalism Impacts?” Victory Briefs. January 17th, 2014. http://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/1/what-happened-to-environmentalism-impacts Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Perm, do the aff and include animals within weak anthro.

Only weak anthro can solve the environment – the alternative is too radical and can’t generate public support.

Mendenhall 9 writes82

The weakly anthropocentric view avoids the difficulties of justifying an environmental ethic from either end of the spectrum. On one hand, it avoids controversy over the existence of intrinsic value in non-human organisms, objects, and ecological systems. This is one important characteristic of a nonanthropocentric ethic like Deep Ecology– finding intrinsic value in all living things.3 By intrinsic value, I mean value that exists independent of any observer to give it value. For example, a nonanthropocentric ethicist would see value in an animal that no human could ever benefit from or even know about, simply because of what it is. While possibly justifiable, an ethic that treats all living things and possibly even ecological systems as intrinsically valuable may seem very radical to a large portion of the public. It seems that even the philosophical community remains divided on the issue. On the other hand, our ethic avoids making felt human desire the loci of all value by showing how considered human values can explain the value in our environment. In other words, what humans value, either directly or indirectly, generates value in the environment. In this way, we avoid unchecked felt preferences that would not be able to explain why excessive human consumption is wrong. Avoiding these controversial stances will contribute substantially to the first advantage of a weakly anthropocentric environmental ethic: public appeal. The importance of public appeal to an environmental ethic cannot be overstated. We are running out of time to slow or reverse the effects of past environmental degradation, and we will need the support of society to combat them effectively. Hence, the most important advantage of a weakly anthropocentric ethic over a nonanthropocentric one is public appeal because many people feel that nonanthropocentrism is just too radical and contrary to common sense. For many, all value does come from humans, since they believe we are the only species capable of rational thought. Opinions about the environment are certainly changing, but anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that most reasons given for increasing environmental protection all reduce to anthropocentrism. For example, the 2004 book The Meat You Eat, by Ken Midkiff, explains why factory farming should be rejected, with a focus on its detrimental effects to human health. The vegan and vegetarian movements have increasingly focused on this angle of the factory farming debate, perhaps because of the broader appeal of human-focused motivations. As Midkiff says, “It is simply impossible to raise animals in concentrated operations and to slaughter these animals by the thousands… without severe health consequences among humans. By treating these animals as units of production, the industrial methods, ultimately and inevitably, produce meats that are unfit to eat.”4 Even if this justification for ending factory farming is not one defended by deep ecologists, isn’t actual change more important? Common justifications for species protection include parents wanting their children to know what an elephant, or a leopard, or a panda look like, how the beauty of animals increases human satisfaction in much the same way that an art gallery would, or the genetic information they can provide which might cure human diseases. In fact, almost every justification printed or aired in major news media reflects a anthropocentric bias. For example, an April 2008 article from the BBC, entitled “Species Loss Bad for Our Health”, surveys “a wide range of threatened species whose biology could hold secrets to possible treatments for a growing variety of ailments.”5 President-elect Barack Obama has consistently spoken about global warming in terms of its impact on future human generations. In a 2007 speech at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he stressed the urgency of the issue by saying that “the polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted… this is not the future I want for my daughters.”6 As for the last premise, most people agree that human consciousness is intrinsically valuable. That is the reason why this value needs little explanation. Even if this justification isn’t perfect, I believe that the ecological ends justify the philosophical means.

82 Beth Mendenhall (2011 CEDA champ, graduated from Kansas state, studied philosophy and political science). “The Environmental Crises: Why We Need Anthropocentrism.” Stance, Volume 2, April 2009. http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/virtualpress/stance/2009_spring/5menderhall.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

The perm is key. Weak anthro is key to practical decision-making. Mendenhall 9 writes83

Another advantage of weak anthropocentricism is its ease as a decision-making calculus. Weighing the intrinsic value of non- human organisms, objects, or systems is significantly more difficult than weighing human values, possibly because of our proximity to and experience with them. If a gorilla has the same intrinsic value as an earthworm, would that justify our killing the gorilla to save two earthworms? If the gorilla does have more intrinsic value, how much more? Why is one ecosystem more valuable than another? If it is not, then why are human-created ecosystems less valuable? All these questions must be answered to act on a nonanthropocentric ethic. Critics may claim that even weak anthropocentrism falls prey to the same problem, but at least the problem is easier to resolve. A gorilla is probably more valuable to human interests than an earthworm, especially since there are fewer gorillas than earthworms. A natural ecosystem is more beneficial to our harmony with nature than a human- made ecosystem. If human consensus about benefit is unclear, we have the guidance of our own conscious. Whether or not I think a gorilla or an earthworm is more valuable is always a relevant question when following a weakly anthropocentric ethic. Admittedly, our ethic may fall prey to the same issue in determinations of the value of one human vs. another, but at least the problem is not as widespread, and we have more experience with human value so that controversy will be easier to answer. Because this is a problem for all ethical systems, and is not unique to an anthropocentric environmental ethic, we will not address it here. This observation about practicality helps explain why more than just being a benefit, a human-centered view is the only type of environmental ethic we can practically utilize. As humans, it is probably impossible to escape a human- centered ethic to guide our decision-making. Our subjectivity means we can only experience the world from one perspective, and this perspective colors everything we do. Our self- preservation instincts lead us to value ourselves above the rest of the world. What person would reasonably kill themselves, or their children, friends, and neighbors, to save an ecosystem? Or two ecosystems? Though some radical environmentalists have chained themselves to trees and bulldozers, this is generally a statement to express the direness of the environmental situation, instead of an actual bodily sacrifice. Would the same environmentalist give their life to save two gorillas, or two earthworms? We are all responsible for the world, but we are first and foremost responsible for ourselves. More than that, our subjectivity means that one deep ecologist will observe value in the world differently than the next. Even those who subscribe to the idea that objective deliberations are possible, admit that we can rarely access them. Believing we can have knowledge of intrinsic value that we cannot access in any meaningful way would require the adoption of moral realism, the idea that we can have knowledge of objective moral facts. The problem with this view is the lack of a perceptual capacity that would enable us to know moral facts the way we can see colors and hear music.

83 Beth Mendenhall (2011 CEDA champ, graduated from Kansas state, studied philosophy and political science). “The Environmental Crises: Why We Need Anthropocentrism.” Stance, Volume 2, April 2009. http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/virtualpress/stance/2009_spring/5menderhall.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Alt leads to right-wing fill in. Lobel 7 writes84 Both the practical failures and the fallacy of rigid boundaries generated by extralegal activism rhetoric permit us to broaden our inquiry to the underlying assumptions of current proposals regarding transformative politics — that is, attempts to produce meaningful changes in the political and socioeconomic landscapes. The suggested alternatives produce a new image of social and political action. This vision rejects a shared theory of social reform, rejects formal programmatic agendas, and embraces a multiplicity of forms and practices. Thus, it is described in such terms as a plan of no plan,211 “a project of projects,”212 “anti-theory theory,”213 politics rather than goals,214 presence rather than power,215 “practice over theory,”216 and chaos and openness over order and formality. As a result, the contemporary message rarely includes a comprehensive vision of common social claims, but rather engages in the description of fragmented efforts. As Professor Joel Handler argues, the commonality of struggle and social vision that existed during the civil rights movement has disappeared.217 There is no unifying discourse or set of values, but rather an aversion to any metanarrative and a resignation from theory. Professor Handler warns that this move away from grand narratives is self-defeating precisely because only certain parts of the political spectrum have accepted this new stance: “[T]he opposition is not playing that game . . . . [E]veryone else is operating as if there were Grand Narratives . . . .”218 Intertwined with the resignation from law and policy, the new bromide of “neither left nor right” has become axiomatic only for some.219 The contemporary critical legal consciousness informs the scholarship of those who are interested in progressive social activism, but less so that of those who are interested, for example, in a more competitive securities market. Indeed, an interesting recent development has been the rise of “conservative public interest lawyer[ing].”220 Although “public interest law” was originally associated exclusively with liberal projects, in the past three decades conservative advocacy groups have rapidly grown both in number and in their vigorous use of traditional legal strategies to promote their causes.221 This growth in conservative advocacy is particularly salient in juxtaposition to the decline of traditional progressive advocacy. Most recently, some thinkers have even suggested that there may be “something inherent in the left’s conception of social change — focused as it is on participation and empowerment — that produces a unique distrust of legal expertise.”222 Once again, this conclusion reveals flaws parallel to the original disenchantment with legal reform. Although the new extralegal frames present themselves as apt alternatives to legal reform models and as capable of producing significant changes to the social map, in practice they generate very limited improvement in existing social arrangements. Most strikingly, the cooptation effect here can be explained in terms of the most profound risk of the typology — that of legitimation. The common pattern of extralegal scholarship is to describe an inherent instability in dominant structures by pointing, for example, to grassroots strategies,223 and then to assume that specific instances of counterhegemonic activities translate into a more complete transformation. This celebration of multiple micro-resistances seems to rely on an aggregate approach — an idea that the multiplication of practices will evolve into something substantial. In fact, the myth of engagement obscures the actual lack of change being produced, while the broader pattern of equating extralegal activism with social reform produces a false belief in the potential of change. There are few instances of meaningful reordering of social and economic arrangements and macro-redistribution. Scholars write about decoding what is really happening, as though the scholarly narrative has the power to unpack more than the actual conventional experience will admit.224 Unrelated efforts become related and part of a whole through mere reframing. At the same time, the elephant in the room — the rising level of economic inequality — is left unaddressed and comes to be understood as natural and inevitable.225 This is precisely the problematic process that critical theorists decry as losers’ self-mystification, through which marginalized groups come to see systemic losses as the product of their own actions and thereby begin to focus on minor achievements as representing the boundaries of their willed reality. The explorations of micro-instances of activism are often fundamentally performative, obscuring the distance between the descriptive and the prescriptive. The manifestations of extralegal activism — the law and organizing model; the proliferation of informal, soft norms and norm-generating actors; and the celebrated, separate nongovernmental sphere of action — all produce a fantasy that change can be brought about through small-scale, decentralized transformation. The emphasis is local, but the locality is described as a microcosm of the whole and the audience is national and global. In the context of the humanities, Professor Carol Greenhouse poses a comparable challenge to ethnographic studies from the 1990s, which utilized the genres of narrative and community studies, the latter including works on American cities and neighborhoods in trouble.226 The aspiration of these genres was that each individual story could translate into a “time of the nation” body of knowledge and motivation.227 In contemporary legal thought, a corresponding gap opens between the local scale and the larger, translocal one. In reality, although there has been a recent proliferation of associations and grassroots groups, few new local-statenational federations have emerged in the United States since the 1960s and 1970s, and many of the existing voluntary federations that flourished in the mid-twentieth century are in decline.228 There is, therefore, an absence of links between the local and the national, an absent intermediate public sphere, which has been termed “the missing middle” by Professor Theda Skocpol.229 New social movements have for the most part failed in sustaining coalitions or producing significant institutional change through grassroots activism. Professor Handler concludes that this failure is due in part to the ideas of contingency, pluralism, and localism that are so embedded in current activism.230 Is the focus on small-scale dynamics simply an evasion of the need to engage in broader substantive debate? It is important for next-generation progressive legal scholars, while maintaining a critical legal consciousness, to recognize that not all extralegal associational life is transformative. We must differentiate, for example, between inward-looking groups, which tend to be self- regarding and depoliticized, and social movements that participate in political activities, engage the public debate, and aim to challenge and reform existing realities.231 We must differentiate between professional associations and more inclusive forms of institutions that act as trustees for larger segments of the community.232 As described above, extralegal activism tends to operate on a more divided and hence a smaller scale than earlier social movements, which had national reform agendas. Consequently, within critical discourse there is a need to recognize the limited capacity of small-scale action. We should question the narrative that imagines consciousness-raising as directly translating into action and action as directly translating into change. Certainly not every cultural description is political. Indeed, it is questionable whether forms of activism that are opposed to programmatic reconstruction of a social agenda should even be understood as social movements. In fact, when groups are situated in opposition to any form of institutionalized power, they may be simply mirroring what they are fighting against and merely producing moot activism that settles for what seems possible within the narrow space that is left in a rising convergence of ideologies. The original vision is consequently coopted, and contemporary discontent is legitimated through a process of self-mystification.

84 Orly Lobel 7, University of San Diego Assistant Professor of Law, 2007, The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical Legal Consciousness and Transformative Politics,” 120 HARV. L. REV. 937, http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/lobel.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Perm, do the AC, then the K.

The perm is key. Human and animal liberation is interrelated. Best 9 writes85 CAS must stay relentlessly negative and uncompromising in its critique of the current social order, as it remains affirmative in the sense of validating possibilities of resistance and envisioning an alternative future. The ultimate purpose of this theory and critique is not to deconstruct textual contradictions, to explore the polyphony of meaning, or to experiment with alternative realities in literary imagination, but rather to align itself with animals and fight for their liberation. Importantly this must not occur in a way that conceptualizes animal issues as if they existed apart from social issues, but rather that illuminates the central role of speciesism in the major problems of cultures and societies, and shows how animal exploitation is now only part of a massive global system of exploitation that must be changed at all points and not just one.¶ CAS takes shape in awareness of historically- constructed ideologies and systems of power and domination in which humans have oppressed and exploited animals. CAS has a broad and holistic understanding of hierarchical power systems (e.g., racism, sexism, classism, and speciesism) and their intricate interrelationships, explores the systemic destructive effects of capitalism on all life and the Earth, and views animal liberation and human liberation as inseparably interrelated projects. In the spirit and tradition of the Frankfurt School, it seeks to realize its potential of developing one of the most comprehensive and radical outlooks yet developed.

Alt leads to authoritarianism. Scott 3 writes86

In a pertinent criticism, Michael Northcott suggests that this notion of cosmological identification requires 'incorporating the other into self. Rather than privileging the importance of limits in human interaction with nature, this notion of an expansive self effectively abolishes such limits - and encourages such abolition. Such a position erases key aspects of difference between humanity and non-human nature (here Northcott draws on the work of Val Plumwood) and thereby has the appearance of challenging the Western obsession with the concept of the self. Yet, in fact, such a view perpetuates the Eurocentric affirmation of self by incorporating all that which is not self into the expansive self. We can go further: the logic is totalitarian , the politics that of identity, the totality that of the 'whole' of the expansive self. The deep ecology position, as presented by Fox, is now seen to be a form of 'act-based' idealism whose roots lie in the work of Rousseau and Fichte (rather than Spinoza and Gandhi). The expansive 'natural self’ forms the core of the theory. Yet, of course, such a self never meets resistance for it operates with no genuine account of otherness or difference. Such a self is precisely self-enclosed. It is never broken and remade through its encounters for its mode of relation is assimilation. Thus this self never negotiates but rather incorporates. In this precise sense, its logic is totalitarian. If an established and well-founded democracy, as Adam Pezeworski suggests, may be defined as 'a system in which the politically relevant forces subject their values and interests to the uncertain play of democratic institutions,' the deep ecology position has no conceptual place for the democratic play of negotiation. In short, we begin to approach the theoretical roots of a point made earlier: deep ecology lacks a political theory and lapses unwittingly into authoritarianism.

85 Steve [Associate prof of philosophy @ UT El Paso]; The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: Putting Theory into action and Animal Liberation into Higher Education; www.stateofnature.org/?p=5903 86 Peter Scott “A Political Theory of Nature.” 2003, http://books.google.com/books? id=5lCWkIoFl7QC&pg=PA80&dq=deep+ecology+assimilation&lr=&ei=L7iIScfyM4HwMv_indEE#PPA87,M1 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Avoiding human extinction is a precondition for their ethics. Anthro is key to space col which solves extinction. Baum 9 writes87

It is of note that the priority of reducing the risk of human extinction persists in forms of CBA which value nature in an ecocentric fashion, i.e. independently of any consideration of human interests. The basic reason is that without humanity leading long-term survival efforts (which would most likely include space colonization), the rest of Earth life would perish as a result of the astronomical processes described above. This point is elaborated by futurist Bruce Tonn, who argues on ecocentric grounds for reorienting society to focus on avoiding human extinction through both immediate avoidance of catastrophe and long-term space colonization [40]. Tonn dubs this process of surviving beyond Earth’s eventual demise ‘‘transcending oblivion’’ [41]. There is thus some convergence in the recommendations of the common anthropocentric, money-based CBA and the ecocentric CBA described here. This convergence results from the fact that (in all likelihood) only humans are capable of colonizing space, and thus human survival is necessary for Earth life to transcend oblivion.

Simply rethinking anthro can’t solve. The alt is a form of mental determinism which doesn’t reflect the real world and can’t address capitalism. Burdon 12 writes88

While certainly instructive, the belief that social change occurs solely by shifting cultural ideas (such as anthropocentrism) suffers from mental determinism – the notion that ideas are the sole determiner of social reality. Adopting such a narrow perspective is a critical shortcoming in social theory. Indeed, mental determination is as limited an explanation as technological determinism, class-struggle determinism or changes arising out of (cultural) shifts in everyday life (this is the political position taken by Paul Hawken in his influential text, Blessed Unrest). In practice, major social transformations occur through a dialectic of transformations across a range of moments and develop unevenly in space and time to produce all manner of local contingencies. This is evidenced in the contrast between the Occupy movement and the second Arab uprising (or Arab Spring). A deterministic stance fails to capture this complex interplay and produces a contingency in human evolution (in much the same way that unpredictable mutations produce contingency in Darwinian theory). Another reason for moving away from a strict mental explanation for the environmental crisis is that it ignores those structural forms, which perpetuate exploitation without relying on a particular worldview. The most important of these is industrial capitalism. It is a truism, but one that must be constantly stressed, that capitalism’s inherent thirst for short-term growth is fundamentally inconsistent with environmental protection. Further, the structural attributes of capitalism mean that the personality and worldview of individual capitalists is largely irrelevant. It simply does not matter if the director of Exxon Mobile or BHP Billiton is a good person or holds an ecological worldview. No amount of eco-literature, bush walking or Buddhist retreats will release a corporate director from the structural economic and legal pressures that pertain to a capitalist mode of production. Karl Marx makes this point forcefully in volume one of Das Kapital. The capitalist, according to Marx, has no real freedom. They are mere cogs in a mechanism, who have to reinvest a portion of their profits to grow their enterprise because the “coercive laws of competition” force them to. The alternative is to go out of business and lose social status. As capital personified, their psychology is focused on the augmentation of exchange-value and the accumulation of social power in limitless money-form. If a capitalist shows any sign of drifting away from their central mission, the pesky laws of competition bring them back into line. Thus “accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production” becomes the central mantra of a capitalist mode of production.

87 Baum, PhD @ Penn State University, 2009, “Costebenefit analysis of space exploration: Some ethical considerations,” Space Policy, Vol. 25 88 Dr. Peter Burdon (PhD thesis was on earth jurisprudence, lecturer at the Adelaide Law School). “Environmental Protection and the Limits of Rights Talk.” Right Now. August 10th, 2012. http://rightnow.org.au/topics/environment/environmental-protection- and-the-limits-of-rights-talk/ Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Econ/Poverty Negs

1AR AT Econ

Non-unique. There’s high poverty and low growth in Africa now despite resource extraction. Pegg 3 writes89 The emphasis on natural resource extraction to promote economic growth and reduce poverty has generated controversy amongst development scholars, donors and borrowers, and civil society. These observers have noted that resource extraction has questionable economic and poverty reduction benefits, and can exact severe environmental and social costs. Indeed, despite the intensive exploitation of Africa's natural resource wealth, poverty in most African countries is on the rise. Over the past generation, most sub- Saharan African countries have suffered from conspicuously low rates of economic growth and produced disappointing results in terms of reducing poverty and addressing the basic needs of their citizens. Between 1987 and 1998, poverty in the region increased by 30 percent. As a result, Africa is now the region with the largest share of people living on less than $1 per day.

89 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Link Turns Analytic Warrants Resource extraction kills growth. 5 warrants. Singh and Bourgouin 13 write90 Natural resource capital represents a particular type of capital. Most obviously, it is cyclically prone to windfall booms and busts. Historically, resource commodities have been subjected to external shocks and sharp flux in commodity prices, as was seen with the severe contraction of demands for certain minerals in the wakes of the two World Wars and the Great Depression (Bulmer, 1994). With global market integration, commodity prices have increasingly become susceptible to speculation in the international minerals markets, which adversely affect the production processes (Webb, 1999). From both an economic as well as a policy viewpoint, extractive resources’ relative absence of value added together with their price volatility on world markets make them an unreliable source of income for national governments (Auty, 1993; Humphreys et al., 2007; Sachs & Warner, 1997, 2001). Moreover, booming resource sectors are believed to draw capital and labour away from a country’s manufacturing and agricultural sectors, thereby raising their production costs (Ross, 2001: 305) and leading to the appreciation of real exchange rates caused by the sharp rise in commodity exports, an observation referred to as the Dutch Disease . Hence, resource-led development is considered unlikely as booms fail to bring investments into the more stable and dynamic sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing, but instead, direct investment and factor inputs towards the resource sector. Similarly, the open access exploitation hypothesis suggests that not only does extraction under open access conditions generate few resource rents to be reinvested but it also leads to over-exploitation of natural capital in the long run, thus curbing the development potential of the resource sector. For others, unfavourable environmental conditions may directly inhibit the efficient generation of natural resource rents and sustainable returns through the reinvestment of rents into other productive assets, as well as indirectly through a long-lasting influence on patterns of political and legal institutional development (Auty, 2001, 1993; Barbier, 2005, 2003; Easterly & Levine, 2003). The observed inability of developing states to transform resource wealth into productive capital over past decades has become the central preoccupation of economists and political scientists alike, not to mention of scholars of development. The dominant view is that the revenues generated from natural capital are not comparable to income that can be reinvested as profits. Unlike in the productive sectors of the economy, windfall profits from extraction do not multiply and as the resources upon which they are based are de facto depletable, extractive industries are unsustainable over the long run (Humphreys et al., 2007; Karl, 2007 ). In this regard, the recent tendency of turning resource revenues into sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) that cannot be spent in the domestic economy has become the prescriptive response of the World Bank to reduce the deleterious effects of uncertainty in the resource sector.

Prioritizing resource extraction kills growth. Multiple warrants. WSM 8 writes91 Finally, geography determines what natural resources a country has that may be traded as commodities on world markets – oil, diamonds, copper, rubber, coltan, to name a few. However, as highlighted in the Sudan issue of the World Savvy Monitor, the existence of natural resources in an otherwise impoverished country often brings more negative than positive effects. Some of the most resource-rich countries in the world are among its poorest, as economies built on the extraction of commodities are generally not engines of growth. Resource wealth acts as what economists call external rents, and creates significant wealth for the country while eliminating the need for the government to tax and thus be responsive to its people. Resource wealth creates conditions conducive to corruption and embezzlement. In addition, the extraction of these resources is often harmful to the environment and generates opportunities for exploitation by domestic elites as well as those from the developed world. Economies based on natural resource extraction are extremely vulnerable to volatility in world commodities prices, and high commodity prices can artificially inflate the value of a country’s currency. Export diversification in these countries, which generally leads to more sustainable and equitable growth, is discouraged. In addition to these factors, resource wealth substantially increases the risk of conflict, both with neighbors and within a country itself. Nigeria is a perfect case in point. Despite being one of the world’s largest oil producers, it is among the world’s poorest nations, with the residents of its oil-rich delta among the world’s most desperate people and its citizens subject to internal conflict and violence. Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo are other resource-rich LDCs in which people live in extreme poverty and are subjected to near perpetual civil war.

90 Jewellord Nem Singh and France Bourgouin (editors of this book). “Resource Governance and Developmental States in the Global South.” Palgrave Macmillan. November 2013. http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/9781137286789.pdf 91 World Savvy Monitor (free online current affairs service for educators, providing background information on complex global issues). “Global Poverty: Why?” Global Poverty and International Development. Issue 5, October 2008. http://worldsavvy.org/monitor/index.php?option=com_content&id=350&Itemid=539 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Increased resource extraction kills DC economies – price volatility and mismanaged windfalls. Pegg 3 writes92 Other researchers have explained the dismal economic performance of petroleum and mineral exporting countries as a function of two characteristics of international commodities markets: long-term price deflation and price volatility.54 Non-oil commodity prices, including minerals, have declined in real terms for most of the twentieth century, and have trended almost continually downward since the 1970s.55 Since 1984, real non-oil commodity prices have fallen by about 45 percent. In 1992, the price of non-oil commodities relative to that of manufactures reached its lowest level in over 90 years.56 As a result of the precipitous fall in the price of minerals and other commodities, many developing countries that export primary commodities - particularly those that also import oil57 - have suffered from significant declines in their terms of trade.58 For example, in the mid-1970s, the price of copper plummeted by 65 percent in real terms and has never recovered. Zambia, which relies heavily on copper exports and imports oil, has been particularly hard hit; in the two decades from 1980 to 2000, per capita income fell by over 50 percent, from US$630 to US$300.59 Similar declines in the price of gold have at times taken heavy tolls on countries dependent upon the mining sector, like South Africa and Ghana. The crisis in 1997 saw the price of gold fall by 35 percent from its peak in the mid-1990s, and led to massive layoffs of miners in South Africa.60 The World Bank has even contributed to the decline in commodity prices by promoting increased production of the same commodity in various countries at the same time, resulting in excess supply on the world market. For instance, the Bank simultaneously encouraged Zambia, Chile, Peru, and the former Zaire to expand their copper production.61 In addition to trending downward over the long term, commodity prices are notoriously volatile and subject to dramatic price fluctuations. Dependence on a single commodity or limited group of commodities can therefore subject the domestic economy and government revenues to similar volatility and unpredictability.62 These "boom-and-bust" cycles are difficult to manage and stabilize, even for countries that receive windfall revenues when prices increase. The ready access to resource wealth experienced during the boom phases seems to reduce the ability of governments to implement prudent economic and fiscal policies. 63 As one scholar explains "[t]he pernicious access to easy money weakens traditional work ethics, lowering financial discipline within bureaucracies and leading to reckless budgetary practices."64 Commodity price volatility has had dramatic impacts on a number of resource-dependent African countries. According to one observer, 11 [In] Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire and Zambia, among other countries, windfalls from commodity price increases (oil, cocoa, coffee, copper) led governments to embark on ambitious investment projects, expand government employment and service provisions, and undertake extensive infrastructure programs… With declining revenues, governments were unable to shoulder the recurrent costs associated with those ambitious endeavors, which led to rising fiscal deficits, failed investments and cutbacks in public sector employment. The insurmountable debt overhang of more than a few African countries can be tied to the boom-and-bust cycles of commodity prices.65

General Empirics The resource curse is empirically proven. Sachs and Warner 95 write93

One of the surprising features of economic life is that resource-poor economies often vastly outperform resource-rich economies in economic growth. The basic pattern is evident in a sample of 97 developing countries in figure 1, where we graph each country’s annual growth rate between 1970-1989 in relation to the country’s natural resource-based exports in 1970, measured as a percent of GDP. Resource-based exports are defined as agriculture, minerals, and fuels. On average, countries with a high value of resource-based exports to GDP tend to have a lower growth rate. Later in the paper we will show that this basic negative relationship is present after controlling for other relevant characteristics of the economies, such as initial income levels and trade policies. The oddity of resource-poor economies outperforming resource-rich economies has been a constant motif of economic history. In the seventeenth century, resource-poor Netherlands eclipsed Spain, despite the overflow of gold and silver from the Spanish colonies in the New World. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, resource-poor countries such as Switzerland and Japan surged ahead of resource-abundant economies such as Russia. In the past thirty years, the world’s star performers have been the resource-poor Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) of East Asia – Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore – while many resource-rich economies such as the oil-rich countries of Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, have gone bankrupt.

The resource curse is empirically proven on a persistent basis. Pegg 3 writes94

Economists have noted a paradox in the economic performance of developing countries - contrary to expectations, resource-rich countries have tended to grow more slowly than resource-poor countries. This negative effect has been observed across time and in countries with widely varying incomes, population sizes, types of government, and religious and ethnic compositions. In fact, this phenomenon has proven so persistent that it has been characterized as a "constant motif of economic history." Numerous empirical studies have confirmed that resource wealth tends to have a strong negative effect on economic growth.40 For example, the World Bank Mining Department's own recent study of the effects of mining on economic growth found that on average, as mineral dependence increases, economic performance decreases.41 According to the World Bank's study, while GDP per capita grew by 1.7 percent per year on average in all of the developing and transition economies throughout the 1990s, it contracted by 2.3 percent per year in those countries in which mining comprised over 50 percent of exports.42 In the 48 mining countries considered by the study - where mining products contribute six percent or more of all exports - GDP contracted by 1.15 percent per year, a decline over the course of the decade of about 11 percent.43 As one academic (and former visiting World Bank researcher) noted, "[b]y any measure, this is a catastrophic record."44 A similar negative effect has been observed in oil-producing countries. Between 1965 and 1998, member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) experienced a decrease in their per capita GNP (Gross National Product/Income) of 1.3 percent per year on average, while lower- and middle-income countries as a whole grew by an average rate of 2.2 percent per year.45 Sub-Saharan African countries have not escaped the negative effects of resource dependence on growth rates. According to the World Bank's study, while the economies of sub-Saharan African countries contracted by 0.8 percent throughout the 1990s, mining countries in the region did even worse, contracting by 1 percent per year, or 25 percent more than the region as a whole.46 Perhaps nowhere in the world has resource-led development more spectacularly failed to catalyze economic growth than in Nigeria, where per capita income remains at less than $1 a day, despite the fact that $300 billion in oil rents have been generated over the past 25 years.

93 Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner (Harvard Institute for International Development). “Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper. December 1995. http://www.nber.org/papers/w5398.pdf 94 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

The resource curse is caused by Dutch Disease, multiple examples. Pegg 3 writes95 Researchers have put forward several explanations for how natural resource wealth may depress long-term growth rates, noting two effects that work in tandem to suppress domestic growth rates. Resource booms tend to cause: (1) real exchange rates to rise due to the large inflows of foreign exchange generated by the increased resource exports; and (2) labor and capital to migrate to the booming resource sector from other productive sectors.48 Together, these two effects result in higher costs and reduced competitiveness for domestically produced goods and services, thereby reducing agricultural and manufacturing exports.49 Thus, natural resource booms can "crowd out" other important export sectors of the economy and render them uncompetitive.50 This phenomenon has come to be known as "Dutch Disease" after the negative effects of the North Sea oil boom on industrial production in the Netherlands. “Dutch Disease” has manifested itself in several African countries that have experienced booms in their extractives sectors. For example, the oil boom in Congo-Brazzaville saw a marked decline in the production of coffee, cocoa, and sugar as rural dwellers left the plantations for the cities. Cameroon also experienced “Dutch Disease” during its oil boom of the early 1980s, as oil grew to account for two-thirds of export earnings.51 And in Gabon, a country that has never produced enough food to feed its population, oil dependence has exacerbated the deficiencies of the agricultural sector to the point where only about one percent of total land area is under cultivation.52 As a result, Gabon now depends entirely on imported food.53

Foreign investment doesn’t make developing countries better off. FOE 3 writes96

As Rubens Ricupero, Secretary General of UNCTAD recently commented: "So far there is no empirical evidence to suggest that developing countries are necessarily better off in terms of attracting and retaining quality FDI within the confines of multilaterally agreed disciplines in investment ... What is evident … is that the existence of investment rules will do little to tackle the problem of distribution of the potential gains from trade and FDI. Investment tends to concentrate where capital is already present. Thus, imbalances between and within countries - imbalances that have been sharply exacerbated as a result of globalisation and liberalisation - will not be affected by the absence of investment barriers, as some of its proponents have suggested" (Ricupero, 1999). Box 4: Foreign direct investment (FDI) Some 80 per cent of FDI is accounted for by cross border mergers and acquisitions (UNCTAD, 2000). These are renowned for leading to job losses. Subsequent to one such merger (of BP and Amoco) 7,000 redundancies were announced. Moreover, in 1998 BP-Amoco axed a further 3,000 jobs because, despite the fact that it still made a massive $4.5 billion profit, this was a drop from $6.5 billion the previous year. In 1999, BP-Amoco acquired American oil company Arco resulting in a further 2,000 job losses. In 2000, Chevron acquired Texaco with the predicted loss of 4,000 jobs. In 1999, China attracted about 20% of all FDI inflows to developing countries (the next highest were Brazil at some 15%, Argentina and Hong Kong China both11%, and Mexico and the Republic of Korea both 5% ). China is not renowned for its deregulatory approach to investment or any other sector of its economy. FDI is much more likely to be attracted to countries with a large market, basic infrastructure and a good skills base. This compounds the concept of ‘trade abandonment’ in which the majority of FDI goes to a minority of countries whilst the others are abandoned in a supposedly globalised economy. Source: UNCTAD, 2000.

95 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf 96 Friends of the Earth International. “The world trade system: How it works and what’s wrong with it.” August 2003. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Empirical Examples

Cote d’Ivoire proves. Exports don’t ensure development. FOE 3 writes97

Increasing exports do not necessarily lead to development. Cote d'Ivoire has increased its exports (from $3 billion in 1980 to $5 billion in 1995). However, Cote d'Ivoire's GDP has remained stagnant (the same $10 billion in 1995 as it was in 1980) and their external debt has skyrocketed (from $7 billion to $19 billion over the same period). Cote d'Ivoire is largely dependent on exports of primary commodities like coffee and cocoa yet, during the 1980s, the world market prices for these products collapsed. Cote d'Ivoire had to increase the volume of its exports to earn the same amount of revenue. With an external debt nearly four times as much as its export revenue, Cote d'Ivoire is not going to be able to export its way out of the debt crisis and into development.

East Asia proves. Foreign investment makes economies less stable, risking global decline and poverty. FOE 3 writes98

Box 3: All the World's a loser. The 1997 Asian economic collapse - a global crisis with global effects caused by a global trade system Cause: Speculative capital poured into the relatively immature Asian financial markets to take advantage of the growth in the tiger economies. At the first signs of economic problems, this capital flowed out again almost overnight. This was made possible because of deregulated financial markets. Effects: It is estimated that over 50 million more people in Asia fell into poverty. In East Asia alone, unemployment increased by 3.3 million. The only major growth economy in the developed world - the US - had to absorb surplus and cheap production from Asia causing unemployment and a very large trade deficit in the US. Impacts were also felt elsewhere around the world, for example, cheaper exports from Thailand also caused the closure of a German Electronics company in the UK with the loss of 1,100 jobs. Following the Asian crisis, global economic growth slowed down to about 2%, its lowest level for five years. Export commodity prices also declined, with severe impacts on African countries dependent on primary raw materials. Source: UNDP, 1999

Nigeria proves. Resource extraction perpetuates income inequality. Pegg 3 writes99 Oil and/or mineral dependence is associated with exceptionally low living standards, and conspicuously poor performance on a range of important social welfare indicators.93 Oil and mineral dependence have been linked with unusually high poverty rates, poor health care, high rates of child mortality,94 and reduced expenditures on education.95 In addition, oil dependence has been associated with poor educational performance, including low enrollment rates in primary schools and low rates of adult literacy. Mineral dependence has been strongly correlated with income inequality. 96 In Nigeria, for example, the disparity between the country's oil wealth and its people's poverty is alarming. Studies note that spending on health and education remains low due to mismanagement of government monies and budgetary policies that prioritize repaying external debt over providing social services. In some parts of Nigeria, the government spends as little as $2 per person per year on health care, far short of the $34 per year the World Health Organization recommends in low-income countries.97

97 Friends of the Earth International. “The world trade system: How it works and what’s wrong with it.” August 2003. 98 Friends of the Earth International. “The world trade system: How it works and what’s wrong with it.” August 2003. 99 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Civil War I/L Resource extraction causes civil wars which kill growth. WSM 8 writes100

Of all the factors contributing to world poverty, internal conflict has been enormously damaging to the development prospects of the poorest billion, the damage results from the conflicts themselves, as well as the many ways in which conflict exacerbates other factors. Again, most experts agree that war is both a cause and a symptom of extreme poverty. Most internal conflicts among LDCs are classified as resource conflicts – conflicts that arise over the control of natural resources. They can also be the result of ethnic and historical grievances, many of which are colonial legacies, such as the Hutu- Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. Colonial powers often employed a divide and rule strategy, turning different indigenous ethnic groups against each other to prevent them from uniting against external rulers. These rivalries and hatreds outlasted the colonial era, and decades after independence, many LDCs are still reeling from the fragmentation of their societies. The World Bank has estimated that LDCs are 15 times more likely to experience internal conflict than developed countries. According to an analysis by Paul Collier, of the 58 countries that are home to the poorest billion, a full 73% have experienced a civil war; the occurrence of one civil war is seen to double the risk for a subsequent civil war. For a disadvantaged country that is trying to grow its economy, war is particularly devastating: from the physical destruction of homes, farms, schools, and businesses, to the loss of life and the complete disruption of an already fragile society. Energies of multiple generations are diverted away from growth and to survival and reconstruction. Foreign investors are deterred by war and the perpetual risk of its resumption. Regional factions in neighboring countries often take advantage of vulnerable resources and populations. Simultaneously, refugees destabilize the region. Brookings Institution scholar Susan Rice has vividly described this phenomenon as a “doom spiral.” See Lael Brainard and Derek Chollet’s book, Too Poor for Peace: Global Poverty, Conflict, and Security in the 21st Century, for more detail on what they have called the “poverty-insecurity nexus.”

100 World Savvy Monitor (free online current affairs service for educators, providing background information on complex global issues). “Global Poverty: Why?” Global Poverty and International Development. Issue 5, October 2008. http://worldsavvy.org/monitor/index.php?option=com_content&id=350&Itemid=539 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

More evidence – civil wars turn growth. Hoeffler 8 writes101

Taking the national level first, one clear cost of civil war is a reduction in economic growth. Using a panel data estimate, one year of conflict reduces a country’s growth rate by 2.2 percent. Since, on average, each civil conflict lasts for about seven years, the economy will be 15 percent smaller at the end of the war than if the war had not taken place. During the post-war recovery, even though the economy on average grows at an annual rate of more than 1 percent above the norm, it will take roughly ten years to return to its pre- war growth rates (that is, 17 years after the conflict started). 21 years after the start of the original war, the GDP has returned to the level it would have achieved if no war had occurred. The total economic cost, expressed as a present value at the start of the war (using a 5 percent discount rate), is 105 percent of the GDP at that point. The welfare of a country’s population is further reduced because of increased military spending during and after the war. It is estimated that military spending increases by about 1.8 percent during the war, and only falls back by 0.5 percent once the conflict has ended. Assuming that this higher level of spending lasts for only ten years after the conflict, the additional cost (expressed again as present value when the conflict started) is 18 percent of GDP. In addition, conflict has a severe effect on human health. One way of summarising this effect is to express the cost in terms of Disability Affected Life Years (DALYs): a measure of the total number of people affected and the period for which their disability lasts. An average war causes an estimated 0.5 million DALYs each year. Assuming they decline smoothly to zero in the 21st year and discounting them at 5 percent as for the direct economic costs gives a figure of 5 million DALYs as the net present value of health costs when hostilities start. If each DALY is valued at $1,000 (roughly the per capita income in many at-risk countries), the economic cost of harm to human health in a typical war is around $5 billion. Regional Costs What are the effects at the regional level? Regression analysis suggests that the growth rate of neighbouring countries not directly involved in the conflict is reduced by 0.9 percent during the war. If they subsequently recover at the same rate as the conflict country, the additional cost (as a present value at the start of the conflict) is 43 percent of initial GDP. On average, each country has 2.7 neighbours, so the direct effect of a typical civil war on neighbouring countries is 115 percent of the initial GDP of one country: greater than the direct effect in the conflict country itself. There is also an effect on military spending in adjoining countries: a neighbourhood arms race often ensues. In the average case considered so far, a 1 percent rise in military expenditure in the country at war would increase the average spending of bordering countries by 0.23 percent. In a typical conflict, that means military spending will increase by 0.4 percent of GDP during the war, and by 0.3 percent during the post-conflict period: a total net present value of 4.3 percent of the country’s initial GDP. On average, there are 2.7 neighbouring countries; thus the total extra cost of the regional arms race is about 12 percent of one country’s GDP. Other costs which are too difficult to quantify are incurred both in the country at war and in the region as a whole, including forced migration and increased disease. With the proviso that the figures so far are therefore underestimated to some degree, the total benefit of averting a single “typical” civil war can be calculated. The various national and regional costs covered so far amount to 250 percent of initial GDP. The average GDP of conflict-affected low-income countries just prior to war is $19.7 billion. Therefore, the cost of a single war is around $49 billion. To this we must add $5 billion of health costs, giving a total cost of $54 billion for a single low-income country. Legacy Effect This is already a significant figure, but in addition there is the “conflict trap”: countries that have just experienced a civil war are more likely to have further conflict. Looking at the 21 countries in which wars started and ended in the period 1965-99, the risk of conflict over the five years before the war averaged 22.3 percent, but this rose to 38.6 percent post-war. Over the 15 year period needed for the risk to reach the pre-war level again, the additional discounted cost are estimated at $10.2 billion. Thus the total national and regional cost of a single war is more than $64 billion. There are additional, global impacts of civil wars, massive in scale but difficult to assign a cost to. For example three world scourges over the last 30 years have had civil conflicts as contributory factors: hard drug production, AIDS and international terrorism. Thus, since the global cost are not included in the $64 billion it should be treated as a conservative estimate. This cost calculation of about $64bn is based on global data. Is this estimate relevant for Africa? Africa’s economies are smaller and the average GDP figure is lower, hence the loss of GDP would be lower if only African countries were to be considered. On the other hand African wars are longer and caused more loss of life, thus increasing the cost of war. African countries also have on average more neighbours and thus an Africa specific estimate of the regional effects of war

Corruption I/L Resource extraction causes corruption – kills growth. Pegg 3 writes102

Research conducted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that extractive industries are a "major determinant of corruption," and are much more likely to induce corruption than other sectors of the economy, such as agriculture.77 Similarly, the World Bank has acknowledged that "[m]ining involves the creation of economic resources and power; both can result in significant corruption, both at the national and the local level."78 The increased corruption associated with resource dependence is also an important reason for why resource-rich countries tend to grow more slowly.79 As Lawrence Summers, the former Chief Economist of the World Bank and United States Secretary of the Treasury observed: The negative economic impacts of corruption also have a social equity dimension;81 government corruption tends to be particularly harmful to the poor, who are least able to pay bribes to obtain government services.82 Resource-rich African countries such as Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are generally perceived to be among the world's most corrupt regimes.83 Transparency International called Zambia's privatization program a "looting exercise," and the country's own privatization agency identified worrying "anomalies" in the sale of the mines.84 In Angola, the IMF has estimated that US$4 billion in oil receipts have disappeared from the government's accounts over the last five years.85 Similarly, in Equatorial Guinea, the entire government income from oil - about US$135 million or 90 percent of the country's foreign exchange export earnings - reportedly remains unaccounted for in the state budget and may have been sent offshore.86 In neighboring Nigeria, former dictator Sani Abacha personally looted his nation's treasury of $4 billion dollars during his five years in power.87

I/L Weighing

Income inequality is the most important root cause of econ decline.

Harkinson 11 writes103

Corporate chieftains often claim that fixing the US economy requires signing new free trade deals, lowering government debt, and attracting lots of foreign investment. But a major new study has found that those things matter less than an economic driver that CEOs hate talking about: equality. "Countries where income was more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells," says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund. Comparing six major economic variables across the world's economies, Berg found that equality of incomes was the most important factor in preventing a major downturn. (See top chart.) Andrew Berg & Jonathan Ostry Andrew Berg & Jonathan OstryAndrew Berg & Jonathan Ostry In their study, Berg and coauthor Jonathan Ostry were less interested in looking at how to spark economic growth than how to sustain it. "Getting growth going is not that difficult; it's keeping it going that is hard," Berg explains. For example, the bailouts and stimulus pulled the US economy out of recession but haven't been enough to fuel a steady recovery. Berg's research suggests that sky-high income inequality in the United States could be partly to blame. So how important is equality? According to the study, making an economy's income distribution 10 percent more equitable prolongs its typical growth spell by 50 percent. In one case study, Berg looked at Latin America, which is historically much more economically stratified than emerging Asia and also has shorter periods of growth. He found that closing half of the inequality gap between Latin America and Asia would more than double the expected length of Latin America's growth spells. Increasing income inequality has the opposite effect: "We find that more inequality lowers growth," Berg says. (See bottom chart.) Berg and Ostry aren't the first economists to suggest that income inequality can torpedo the economy. Marriner Eccles, the Depression-era chairman of the Federal Reserve (and an architect of the New Deal), blamed the Great Crash on the nation's wealth gap. "A giant suction pump had by 1929-1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth," Eccles recalled in his memoirs. "In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped." Many economists believe a similar process has unfolded over the past decade. Median wages grew too little over the past 30 years to drive the kind of spending necessary to sustain the consumer economy. Instead, increasingly exotic forms of credit filled the gap, as the wealthy offered the middle class alluring credit card deals and variable-interest subprime loans. This allowed rich investors to keep making money and everyone else to feel like they were keeping up—until the whole system imploded. Income inequality has other economic downsides. Research suggests that unequal societies have a harder time getting their citizens to support government spending because they believe that it will only benefit elites. A population where many lack access to health care, education, and bank loans can't contribute as much to the economy. And, of course, income inequality goes hand-in-hand with crippling political instability, as we've seen during the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. History shows that "sustainable reforms are only possible when the benefits are widely shared," Berg says. "We hope that we don't have to relearn that the hard way."

103 Josh Harkinson (staff reporter). “Study: Income Inequality Kills Economic Growth.” Mother Jones. October 4th, 2011. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2011/10/study-income-inequality-kills-economic-growth Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

World Bank

World Bank programs push for prioritizing resource extraction and fail to increase growth for most African countries. Pegg 3 writes104

Yet donor assistance from the World Bank and other agencies did little to improve the desperate financial situation of African countries. Many of the loans and grants that donors provided to address the revenue shortfalls were squandered through corruption, mismanagement, and poorly conceived projects that raised borrowers' debt burdens without increasing their country's productive capacity. Furthermore, the policy prescriptions provided by donor governments and international financial institutions like the World Bank failed to produce effective solutions.16 These factors contributed to a descent into such devastating and protracted indebtedness that 34 sub-Saharan African countries are still considered to be "Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries" (HIPC), the World Bank's designation for the poorest and most indebted countries on Earth.17 As a result, many African countries continue to depend on assistance from bilateral and multilateral agencies, including the World Bank. For the last two decades, World Bank assistance has often come in the form of "structural adjustment" programs - macroeconomic programs that promote free-market, export-oriented reforms believed by the Bank to be essential for economic growth. Structural adjustment programs typically include covenants that require borrowing governments to: liberalize trade and increase exports, privatize state-owned companies, reduce government spending, remove subsidies, eliminate controls on exchange rates and prices, and revise investment codes to increase incentives and assurances for foreign investors.23 By 1990, $1.36 billion, or 34.4 percent, of World Bank lending to sub-Saharan Africa was in support of some form of adjustment lending.24 Many African countries received multiple adjustment loans during the 1980s and 1990s - including 26 for Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana, 21 for Senegal, 20 for Uganda, and 18 for Zambia.25 Nonetheless, the results of these loans and their accompanying policy prescriptions have not been encouraging. Of the 12 most intensively adjusted countries in the region, only Uganda and Ghana have achieved significant growth. Both, however, are still HIPC countries with unsustainable debt burdens and among the lowest per capita income levels in the world. Rather than provide support for economic diversification in the resource-rich countries of Africa, structural adjustment programs tended to encourage increased production of primary commodities and excessive reliance on the extractive sectors for export revenue.27 The revenues generated by the oil, gas and mining sectors, it was hoped, could be used to close balance of payments gaps and pay off debts to the World Bank and to other creditors. As will be discussed below, the failure of adjustment policies to foster long-term economic growth in Africa can be attributed in part to this promotion of commodity dependence.

No Spillover Resource extraction industries don’t spill over to other sectors of the economy. Pegg 3 writes105 The poor growth record of resource dependent countries has also been attributed to the nature of extractive industries and their ties to the broader economies in which they operate. In part because resource industries are capital intensive and usually do not generate substantial employment opportunities, they tend to be economic "enclaves" without strong linkages to other parts of the economy. They frequently rely upon small numbers of highly skilled, often expatriate, workers who may live and work in isolated facilities that have minimal contacts with the local economy. In the extreme case of offshore oil facilities, foreign workers may never even enter the country that owns the resource.66 The disconnect between extractive operations and the local economy may be further exacerbated where the facility is owned by foreign transnational corporations that are permitted to fully repatriate their profits rather than invest them locally.67 For example, although ChevronTexaco's massive Escravos terminal in the Niger Delta produces 350,000 barrels of crude oil per day, little of that wealth has reached the neighboring communities. While the expatriate employees of Escravos live in relative splendor within the barbed wire perimeter of the facility, neighbors live in shacks that lack indoor plumbing and telephone service. Ironically, they cannot even purchase gasoline locally. One of the few economic linkages that has developed between Escravos and the local economy is the sex trade that flourishes in the bars and nightclubs frequented by the facility's employees. Prostitution has become one of the few decent-paying employment opportunities for women in the area.68

AT Exports

Export-based development isn’t a viable economic model. FOE 3 writes106 Export-led development and debt as contributing factors: As a result of governments' wholesale acceptance of free trade theory as being in the public interest, the policies of the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank have focused on encouraging countries to follow a 'liberal free market' agenda. Export-led development - the (re)structuring of an economy towards producing goods for export markets in order to afford more imports and stimulate economic growth - is a further fundamental part of current western free market economic policy. However, the empirical evidence in support of export-led development is poor. A focus on export-led development generally pushes countries into cash crops or increased mineral production with associated, severe negative impacts on the environment and on local communities. (see The World Trade System: Winners and Losers, FOE for further detail and case studies). In addition, not everyone can develop through the expansion of their export sector. One of the "unspoken truisms of international trade" is that "...it isn't possible for every nation to export more than it imports. Where will the surplus go?" (Kierans and Stewart, 1989).

106 Friends of the Earth International. “The world trade system: How it works and what’s wrong with it.” August 2003. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT EKC

Willingness to protect the environment doesn’t require a certain income threshold. Israel 3 writes107

This paper uses household-level survey data from twelve developing and three developed countries to examine the empirical relationship between the support for paying higher taxes for environmental protection and per capita national income. Economic theory suggests that if environmental quality is a normal good, all else constant, higher-income households will be more willing to pay for environmental protection than lower-income households. By extension, the willingness to pay for environmental protection in developing countries is often assumed to be lower than in developed ones. However, empirical research using data from developing and developed countries to either support or refute the claim that demand for environmental quality increases with national income is scarce. This issue has important implications for economic development policies: Should environmental protection begin only after a country achieves a certain level of income, or is it an important priority earlier in the development process? For pollutants that have both domestic and global effects, the choices that developing countries make may be of worldwide concern. Results from ordered probit estimation suggest that as per capita real gross domestic product (RGDP) rises, controlling for other household characteristics, the strength of the support for somewhat higher taxes for environmental protection is falling for low-income countries and rising for high-income countries. For the per capita RGDP range of most countries in the sample, as per capita RGDP increases, the strength of support for somewhat higher taxes for environmental protection is falling, but the magnitude of the effect is small. An interpretation of this result is that on the margin qualitative willingness to pay (WTP) may fall as per capita RGDP rises even if total qualitative WTP is rising, especially if either tax revenues in general or environmental expenditures in particular are already high. Households reporting a higher relative income as well as those with more education are more likely to show strong support for somewhat higher taxes for environmental protection. A large percentage of respondents in developing as well as industrialized countries are at least somewhat willing to pay somewhat higher taxes for environmental protection. The evidence suggests that environmental protection may already be important to people in developing countries during the process of economic growth, rather than after a certain level of per capita income has been achieved. Interesting regional differences may also exist, such as the apparent strong support for environmental protection among the lower-income African countries included in this study.

107 Debra Israel (PhD in Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison). “International Support for Environmental Protection.” 2003. http://isu.indstate.edu/disrael/HARRIS_EDE_rv.PDF Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

1AR AT Poverty General. 1. TURN – Resource extraction increases poverty. Ross 3 writes108

A country’s reliance on non-fuel mineral exports – and possibly oil exports as well – also tends to create atypically high poverty rates. A key reason is that resource-rich governments do an unusually poor job of providing education and health care for their citizens. One study found a strong correlation between greater dependence on oil and mineral exports and higher child mortality rates: for each increase in minerals dependence of five points, the mortality rate for children under the age of five rose by 12.7 per thousand; for each five point increase in oil dependence, the under-five mortality rate rose by 3.8 per thousand.8

2. PP is key to sustainability, that’s Grant and Quiggin 13. Environmental damage turns poverty. Sustainable development is key. Amechi 10109

Environmental degradation and poverty are inextricably intertwined.5 The consequence of this linkage is a vicious cycle in which poverty causes the degradation of the environment, and such degradation in turn perpetuates more poverty.6 As aptly observed by Fabra ‘… poverty and environmental degradation are often bound together in a mutually reinforcing vicious cycle, and thus human rights abuses related to poverty can be both cause and effects of environmental problems’.7 It follows that if poverty is the main cause of environmental degradation in Africa, then policies, programmes and legal provisions (regulations, bylaws, rules etc) designed to protect the environment in the region will be unsuccessful without a significant improvement in the living standards, wellbeing and livelihoods of the poor.8 However, this is not an exclusive relationship as the protection of the environment is vital to the achievement of poverty reduction in Africa.9 This is due to the fact that the poor in Africa, who are mostly found in the rural areas of the region, are basically reliant on resources obtainable from their environment for sustenance, and hence, are severely affected by environmental degradation.10 As aptly stated by Kante, ‘for the poor, nature offers a series of goods of inestimable value, on which they depend absolutely: That sums up their life. Environmental damage, which represents a financial loss for the rich, is a much more serious matter for the poor, leading to the loss of their livelihood’.11 Therefore, it can be argued that any sustainable approach to the reduction of poverty in Africa requires an improvement of the natural resource base upon which most of the poor are dependent on.12 This argument has been recognised by various experts with regard to the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a poverty reduction strategy that seeks to improve the well-being and livelihood of the poor in Africa.13 The MDGs are now generally accepted as a blueprint for poverty reduction and overall sustainable development of developing countries in the 21st century.14

3. TURN – Resource dependence perpetuates poverty and low living standards. Pegg 3 writes110

Oil and/or mineral dependence is associated with exceptionally low living standards, and conspicuously poor performance on a range of important social welfare indicators.93 Oil and mineral dependence have been linked with unusually high poverty rates, poor health care, high rates of child mortality,94 and reduced expenditures on education.95 In addition, oil dependence has been associated with poor educational performance, including low enrollment rates in primary schools and low rates of adult literacy. Mineral dependence has been strongly correlated with income inequality. 96 In Nigeria, for example, the disparity between the country's oil wealth and its people's poverty is alarming. Studies note that spending on health and education remains low due to mismanagement of government monies and budgetary policies that prioritize repaying external debt over providing social services. In some parts of Nigeria, the government spends as little as $2 per person per year on health care, far short of the $34 per year the World Health Organization recommends in low-income countries.97

108 Michael Ross (Professor of Political Science at UCLA). “Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview.” Submitted for review to World Bank Research Observer. August 15th, 2003. http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/conflict/ross_2003.pdf 109 Emeka Polycarp Amechi (PhD (Wits). Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria). ‘Linking Environmental Protection and Poverty Reduction in Africa: An Analysis of the Regional Legal Responses to Environmental Protection’, 6/2 Law, Environment and Development Journal (2010), p. 112. http://www.lead-journal.org/content/10112.pdf 110 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

4. TURN – Large-scale resource extraction causes poverty due to migration increase. Pegg 3 writes111

Large-scale resource extraction projects often produce new social problems or exacerbate existing social challenges within the project area. These projects can induce substantial migration of job seekers to the project area, with negative social consequences. The rapid influx of people to the area and higher relative incomes of project workers can inflate the local prices of key goods and services, significantly raising the cost of living, even for those who do not share in the project benefits.103 Such population incursions can also lead to social tensions and new forms of poverty. As the World Bank explains: One of the significant impacts of large-scale mining on the local community is a rapid change in the economic and social fabric of society. As disparities in incomes emerge, the lure of new opportunities creates inmigration. New types of poverty are created, with a mixture of "original residents" who have been unable to share in employment opportunities, and "newcomers" who have migrated in with the hope of finding employment, but have been unsuccessful in doing so. Social ills such as alcohol abuse, prostitution and child labor often increase.104

5. Resource extraction in developing countries doesn’t solve poverty. The poor don’t benefit from growth. Lazare 13 writes112

[Brackets in original.] The World Bank is admitting that so-called economic growth in Africa, rooted in privatization and resource extraction by foreign companies, is not benefiting the vast majority of the continent's people. This comes from an institution has been widely criticized for pushing these very policies of 'growth.' Despite Africa's much-vaunted 'growth' over the past decade, deep poverty and inequality are “unacceptably high and the pace of reduction unacceptably slow,” reads Africa's Pulse, an analysis released Monday by the World Bank. "Almost one out of every two Africans lives in extreme poverty today," and by the year 2030, a vast majority of the world's poor will be located in Africa, the report finds. Francisco Ferreira, Acting Chief Economist for the World Bank Africa Region, states, "Africa grew faster in the last decade than most other regions," with a steadily climbing GDP noted in the report. Yet, this so-called growth is highly dependent on relatively few commodities sold for export, including oil, metals, and minerals. "Nearly three-quarters of countries rely on three commodities for 50 percent or more of export earnings," the report reads, with countries like Angola and Nigeria depending on oil for up to 97 percent of all exports. "[H]igh dependence on one or a few commodities makes Africa’s resource-rich countries vulnerable to sharp movements in prices of these commodities,” explains Punam Chuhan-Pole, Lead Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region and author of Africa’s Pulse. Furthermore, this wealth is siphoned off to foreign investors, with 2012 exports to the EU and U.S. reaching $148 billion, and exports to BRIC countries reaching $144 billion that same year. Overall privatization is skyrocketing, with Gross fixed capital formation rising from 16.4% of GDP in 2000 to 20.4% in 2011, indicating the expansion of business assets. "Higher economic growth does not automatically translate into higher poverty reduction," the report states. "[The report's Findings are] unfortunately pretty typical of what we've seen in global terms, particularly in the global south, where increases in economic growth overlook how citizens are impacted and reinforce the power of elite elements," said leading scholar Stephen Zunes in an interview with Common Dreams. "Economic structures are still rooted in neo-colonial model." "Historically, the World Bank has pushed big mega-development projects that basically increase the rate at which you take stuff out of country, and increased the push for exports of raw materials and increases in consumer goods that only elites can afford," he added. "The problems of resource extraction in Africa are many," writes Godwin Uyi Ojo in Pambazuka News. "Collectively, they are bleeding Africa dry."

6. Resource extraction causes civil wars which cause poverty. WSM 8 writes113

Of all the factors contributing to world poverty, internal conflict has been enormously damaging to the development prospects of the poorest billion, the damage results from the conflicts themselves, as well as the many ways in which conflict exacerbates other factors. Again, most experts agree that war is both a cause and a symptom of extreme poverty. Most internal conflicts among LDCs are classified as resource conflicts – conflicts that arise over the control of natural resources. They can also be the result of ethnic and historical grievances, many of which are colonial legacies, such as the Hutu- Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. Colonial powers often employed a divide and rule strategy, turning different indigenous ethnic groups against each other to prevent them from uniting against external rulers. These rivalries and hatreds outlasted the colonial era, and decades after independence, many LDCs are still reeling from the fragmentation of their societies. The World Bank has estimated that LDCs are 15 times more likely to experience internal conflict than developed countries. According to an analysis by Paul Collier, of the 58 countries that are home to the poorest billion, a full 73% have experienced a civil war; the occurrence of one civil war is seen to double the risk for a subsequent civil war. For a disadvantaged country that is trying to grow its economy, war is particularly devastating: from the physical destruction of homes, farms, schools, and businesses, to the loss of life and the complete disruption of an already fragile society. Energies of multiple generations are diverted away from growth and to survival and reconstruction. Foreign investors are deterred by war and the perpetual risk of its resumption. Regional factions in neighboring countries often take advantage of vulnerable resources and populations. Simultaneously, refugees destabilize the region. Brookings Institution scholar Susan Rice has vividly described this phenomenon as a “doom spiral.” See Lael Brainard and Derek Chollet’s book, Too Poor for Peace: Global Poverty, Conflict, and Security in the 21st Century, for more detail on what they have called the “poverty-insecurity nexus.”

112 Sarah Lazare (staff writer). “World Bank Admits: 'Economic Growth' in Africa = Resource Extraction, Inequality, Poverty.” Common Dreams. October 8th, 2013. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/08-7 113 World Savvy Monitor (free online current affairs service for educators, providing background information on complex global issues). “Global Poverty: Why?” Global Poverty and International Development. Issue 5, October 2008. http://worldsavvy.org/monitor/index.php?option=com_content&id=350&Itemid=539 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Warming Turn

5. TURN – Fossil fuels cause warming which turns poverty. Pegg 3 writes114

There is now overwhelming scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions - produced largely by burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal - cause global warming. A recent report co- sponsored by the World Bank recognizes that climate change must be seen as a development issue, because "climate change and climate variability are serious threats to poverty eradication."107 According to the report: The danger of climate change in the developing world is exacerbated by the fact that poor countries do not have the financial, material, technical or political resources of the developed world to respond to the potentially overwhelming challenges of global warming. 109 Despite this threat, since 1992 the World Bank has financed nearly $25 billion in fossil fuel projects, releasing an estimated 46.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions.110 Global warming is likely to have devastating impacts on many of Africa's poorest citizens. Potential impacts include (1) negative impacts on crop yields and livestock production;111 (2) increased droughts, floods, and other extreme events that will stress water resources, food security, human health and infrastructure; 112 (3) increased desertification in the Western Sahel and Southern Africa;113 (4) flooding, erosion, and displacement in coastal and delta settlements in Mozambique, Senegal and Gambia;114 and (5) significant increases in potential malaria breeding grounds in Southern Africa and the horn of Africa, and even in cities such as Nairobi and Harare that are not currently at risk due to their high altitudes.115

More evidence – climate change turns poverty. Kirby 13 writes115

[Brackets in original.] Peru has more than halved its poverty rate in the last decade, from 48.5% in 2004 to 25.8% in 2012. But the 2013 UNDP report said its vulnerability to a warming climate could cancel the progress it has made in directing economic growth into sustained poverty reduction. Glaciers going One of the UNDP report’s authors, Maria Eugenia Mujica, said: “If we disregard [environmental] sustainability, whatever progress we have made in poverty reduction or improvement of human development will just be erased due to climate change”. With a temperature rise in the Andes of 0.7°C between 1939 and 2006, Peru has already lost 39% of its tropical glaciers. Temperature rises of up to 6°C are expected in many parts of the Andes by the end of this century. Peru’s economic success is in some cases directly linked to activities which contribute to climate change, for example illegal gold mining and logging, and the cocaine trade – all of them environmentally destructive, but lucrative. “The growth does not come from education or health, but from predatory activities, like [resource] extraction and mining”, said Francisco Santa Cruz, another of the report’s authors. Peru is trying to protect itself against the ravages of a warmer world, but the odds are against it. It recently announced plans to invest US $6 bn in renewable energy projects: around the same time came predictions that climate change could cost between 8% and 34% of its GDP. A report by the Inter-American Development Bank has said the entire Latin American and Caribbean region will face annual damages from global warming of about $100 bn by 2050. Taken for granted The Global Canopy Programme and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, describing climate change as “a threat multiplier”, called in a report this month for a new security agenda for Amazonia and the countries of the region. Manuel Pulgar, Peru’s environment minister, said at the report’s launch: “Climate change is a global problem, but one that will multiply local and regional problems in unforeseeable ways. “In Latin America, we have taken Amazonia and its seemingly limitless water and forests as a given. But recent unprecedented droughts have shown us just what happens when that water security falters. “it impacts food and energy production, it affects the wellbeing of entire populations, and it leaves governments and businesses with a big bill to pay. The science is clear, so we cannot afford to miss the opportunity for positive action now.”

114 Scott Pegg (Department of Political Science at Indiana University). “Poverty Reduction or Poverty Exacerbation?” April 2003. http://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/poverty-reduction-or-poverty-exacerbation.pdf 115 Alex Kirby (editor for Climate News Network). “Climate imperils Peru’s poverty drive.” Climate News Network. December 26th, 2013. http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/12/climate-imperils-perus-poverty-drive/ Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

The PP is key to solve climate change. Dana 9 writes116 Critics of the PP have argued that it is indeterminate and hence basically useless because it can never reveal how much precaution is due in a given case. But many principles and practices are indeterminate in their precise results and policy implications.23 As long as invocation of the PP will draw more attention to huge costs associated with highly uncertain but terrible scenarios, and as long as we believe that heuristic biases will otherwise cause too little attention to be paid to those scenarios, invocation of the PP in the climate change context helpful in producing a more balanced discourse — whatever the ultimate policy choices. Invocation of the PP, by itself, may be enough to balance the policy discourse on climate change, even if policymakers continue to use traditional quantified CBA, and just include a numerical probability for catastrophic climate change in the absence of regulatory action and a numerical estimate of the expected costs of such catastrophic change. The PP can serve as a means of framing the quantitative CBAs as only a partial and potentially misleading picture of the danger of choosing regulatory inaction. A more aggressive but nonetheless justifiable deployment of the PP would be to use it as part of the rationale for not quantifying the probability and expected costs of catastrophic scenarios. This refusal to quantify could be scientifically justified given how little we know about the real probability distribution of catastrophic scenarios.24 It would also counteract the tendency to overweigh the certain costs of prevention and mitigation, and to excessively discount or ignore the future costs from regulatory inaction. Why would leaving open-ended (and hence ambiguous) the probability of catastrophic climate change scenarios be likely to result in a relatively heavier weighing of the uncertain costs than would probably occur if some sort of numerical probability distribution were assigned to catastrophic scenarios? From a pure rational choice perspective, perhaps it should not occur. The psychological literature nevertheless suggests that while people are risk-seeking in the avoidance of certain losses as against the avoidance of possible losses when there is numerical probability or probability distribution for the possible losses, people are risk-seeking in the avoidance of truly ambiguous possible losses —that is, losses that are so uncertain that no numerical estimate of the probability or probability distribution of their occurrence is available. Although there is disagreement regarding the definition of "ambiguity" and "ambiguity aversion," the basic idea is that ambiguity is "an intermediate state between ignorance (i.e., complete lack of knowledge) and risk (in which a probability distribution is specified)",25 and that people are more averse to an ambiguous bet than to a quantified risk of loss. The depth and robustness of the phenomenon of ambiguity aversion is, to be sure, a matter of debate,26 as is the robustness of the tendency for risk-seeking in the avoidance of certain losses. But if people are "irrationally" risk-seeking in avoiding both certain losses and ambiguous losses, then a decision framed as a choice between the avoidance of a certain loss on the one hand and the avoidance of an ambiguous loss on the other may be one where irrational biases cancel out where there is no departure from what rational choice theory would dictate.27 In other words, where the choices [is] between the certain losses entailed in prevention and mitigation efforts and the ambiguous losses associated with catastrophic scenarios, heuristic biases may, on net, not distort the decision-making.

116 David Dana (Northwestern University School of Law). “The Contextual Rationality of the Precautionary Principle.” Faculty Working Paper. 2009. Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Consult the Indigenous CP

1. Perm, do the aff and engage in ex post facto consultation. The aff directly solves indigenous land rights, so indigenous people would say yes regardless of when the consultation happens.

2. All cards are about consultation prior to resource extraction projects, not environmental protection projects.

3. Consultation gets dominated by corporations who violently coerce indigenous people and marginalize their identities. Rodriguez-Garavito 10 writes117 Contrary to the (neo)liberal premise of equality between parties, the legal battle is actually highly asymmetric. In fact, the experience of consultation illustrates the governance paradigm’s limitations mentioned earlier, which escalate in the context of minefields cohabited by actors endowed with abysmally different degrees of power. Instead of the ideal conditions for communication postulated by governance theorists, the reality of consultation usually resembles a private act of negotiation more than a public act of deliberation. As in all contractual acts, it reproduces and legitimates structural power differences among the parties. In this regard, consultation reinforces the dominant relations among companies, states, and indigenous peoples. The domination effect has several manifestations. To begin with, consultation processes tend to be privatized operations. De facto, if not de jure, the company interested in executing operations in indigenous territory administers, funds, and controls the consultation process. On more than one occasion, I have traveled to consultation sites on transportation chartered by the company, accompanied not only by the latter’s representatives, but also by public officials who are required to attend the consultation, but who have neither the funds nor the means to arrive at such isolated places (where, moreover, they have never visited before). Within the enclave economies where many consultations occur, the company, for practical purposes, is the state: access to the locale depends on the company, local authorities coordinate and interact with the company, and a large sector of the population is subordinated to the it, either through labor relations or indirect economic dependence. The domination effect also has a violent face in contexts of armed conflict, in which the company’s operations depend in some way or another on protection provided by legal or illegal armed groups. In Urrá, for example, the company had the enthusiastic support of right-wing paramilitary groups, who considered the dam to be essential for the interests of the large landowners they represented. The situation was captured in an article written by Bernard Henry-Levy,115 who traveled to the region in 2001 and interviewed Carlos Castaño, commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, who was later assassinated by his subordinates. When the French philosopher reminded Castaño of the indiscriminate executions committed by his paramilitary death squads, the following exchange ensued: Castaño: Random attacks? Us? Never! There is always a reason. The trade unionists, for example. They prevent people from working! That is why we kill them. Henry-Levy: Okay, and the leader of the indigenous people in the Upper Sinú— that small Indian leader that came down to Tierralata [the closest town]—who was he preventing from working? Castaño: The dam! He was blocking the operation of the dam!116 Violence and intimidation against leaders are common in many of the cases I have observed. One frequent practice in Colombia, for example, consists of the following: the illegal, armed groups interested in the company’s entry intimidate and perpetrate violence against representatives of the community to be consulted, provoking their forced displacement from the territory. Thus, when consultation occurs, it is carried out with members of the community who have stayed behind, in extremely coercive conditions that do not even reach those of a private negotiation. As one leader from ONIC said in an interview in reference to this practice, “There is no negotiation when you have a gun to your head.”117 Even where there is no physical coercion involved, the relations of domination among the parties are present due to the profound economic inequalities that consultation leaves intact. In Urrá as in other places, extreme conditions of poverty and the indigenous people’s social disintegration—which, as explained, border on ethnocide—do not allow for free and informed participation in the consultation process, let alone genuine consent. Although these power asymmetries are mitigated when international and national activist coalitions intervene in support of indigenous peoples, they continue to be endemic, even in cases such as Urrá, where the indigenous cause has gained national and international visibility. The power asymmetry between company and community is exacerbated by the fact that, as legislation and practice in the Latin American countries under study demonstrate, the state acts as official witness of the consultation process, more than as its regulator or guarantor. In this regard, the state apparatus rarely mitigates, or even mediates, the company’s dominance over the community. As a former official of the Colombian Ministry of Environment, who participated in consultation processes for a number of years, told us, “the State’s accompaniment is minimal, a matter of protocol. In many cases, secondhand information submitted by the company serves as the basis . . . . . [For example], environmental impact studies are conducted by anthropologists paid by the companies.”118 Or, as the official who directs the governmental entity in charge of consultations at the national level candidly recognized, “We coordinate, we summon the parties, we mediate, we direct the meetings. But it is the entity that consults, [the company], that must offer the logistical support necessary for convening the community. We do not do this part. The party who consults does it.”119 The party who consults is the company. The consulted is the indigenous community. And, the state stamps its official seal on whatever agreement is produced. Beyond the physical or economic coercion, the effect of domination operates by more subtle and indirect means. Mere

117 Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito (Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Global Justice and Human Rights, University of the Andes (Colombia); Hauser Global Fellow, New York University Law School; Founding member, Center for Law, Justice, and Society (Dejusticia)). “Ethnicity.gov: Global Governance, Indigenous Peoples, and the Right to Prior Consultation in Social Minefields.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1. Winter 2010. http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Public %20Sociology,%20Live/Rodriguez.Global%20Governance.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

participation in consultation processes or in litigation related to them places the indigenous cause within the logic of procedure, which has costs, as it limits what can be said, demanded, and achieved. Although the substantive claims reappear during the course of negotiations and judicial proceedings, in order for them to be effective, they must be articulated within the limits of language and the international and domestic procedural norms related to FPIC. The result is dissolution, at least in part, of politics into law: the conversion of strong political claims (i.e., related to self- determination and consent) into weaker claims (i.e., related to participation and consultation’s requisites). Along the way, indigenous political subjectivity is transformed. In place of the contentious subject of indigenous movements, consultation demands a docile, communicative subject.

4. Consult CPs are bad. a. They moot 100% of my offense since they’re functionally the aff. b. Kills topic education because they re-focus the debate to a minor implementation change instead of whether EP is good.

5. Peru proves. Centralizing consultation in the national government marginalizes indigenous people. Eichler and Schuler 13 write118

In addition, the regulation of the law – Article 2 (2.3) – envisages the approval of a consultation process by the Vice-Ministry of Interculturality (Viceministerio de Interculturalidad), which is part of Peru's Ministry of Culture. In other words, when a regional or local government seeks to initiate a consultation process, it first needs permission from the ministry. Even though the actual law (no. 29785) does not specifically mention this sort of condition, its ambiguity raises the question about dominance between the national government on the one hand and the regional and local governments on the other. This forms part of a wider problem that affects various marginalised groups in Peru: centralisation vs. decentralisation. Former President Fujimori (1990-2000) followed a dictatorial approach and accumulated all political powers in Peru’s capital. The political potential on the regional and local level dried out and areas outside Lima, or any other bigger Peruvian city, were neglected. The significant consequences can still be felt today. The Amazon region and the highlands, home to a majority of indigenous peoples, have limited access to basic services and markets. Although President Humala supports further decentralisation, the situation in outer regions still proves challenging and the national government continues to dominate political decisions. A key reason is the lack of trained staff on the regional and local levels. The majority of experts are still placed in Lima and the training of local and regional officials in managing budgets and providing services to the people has been inadequate. Yet, fiscal transfer to regional and local governments alone will not solve the problem of the under-participation of marginalised groups. If indigenous communities and their local and regional governments do not get the chance to adequately take part in the decision making process, frustrations will continue to rise and lead to further social conflicts and violence. In that case, the conflicts around the Conga mining project are just the beginning of a longer episode of struggle.

118 Jessika Eichler (completed her LL.M. degree at the University of Maastricht and Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights in Lund, Sweden. She has gained diverse experience in the field of human rights at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international cooperation and the NGO sector. As a PhD candidate in human rights at the University of Essex (UK), she focuses on indigenous peoples’ rights in particular) and Fiona Schuler (holds a Master's degree in European Affairs from Sciences Po, Paris and a BA in Media Studies from Ruhr-University Bochum and University of Udine, Italy. She has gained work experience in communications with various development cooperation agencies involving field work in Africa, India and Peru. She has worked for UNESCO, German Agency for International Cooperation and for a member of the European Parliament. Currently Fiona serves as a public affairs consultant advising international companies on political and communication matters). “Keeping Its Promises? Implementing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Peru.” Fair Observer. March 14th, 2013. http://www.fairobserver.com/article/keeping- promises-implementing-indigenous-peoples-rights-peru Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

6. Peru proves. The counterplan fails because of ambiguity over and resistance to the term “indigenous.” Eichler and Schuler 13 write119

At first sight the question of ‘who is indigenous?’ seems abundantly clear. Notwithstanding the non-existence of a universal definition, ILO Convention No. 169 and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provide quantitative attributes of indigenous peoples. Similarly, the Peruvian law on Prior Consultation identifies numerable criteria: ‘direct indigenous descent’, ‘lifestyle and association with traditionally used or occupied territory’, ‘social institutions and particular customs’ and ‘cultural patterns and ways of life as distinct from other sectors of society’. Further, self-ascription in relation to indigenous collective conscience has been used to identify indigenous peoples. However, these thoroughly drafted criteria pose numerous challenges in practice. While the Peruvian Ministry of Culture has not concluded the current population register, previous censuses indicate significant ambiguities in relation to the composition of indigenous populations. The Peruvian government agency Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática carried out censuses in 1993 and 2007, which were based on linguistic differentiation. Notably, the studies focus on the Amazon region that is majorly inhabited by indigenous peoples. Quechua and Aymara peoples inhabiting the Andean zone are widely excluded from the census. The reason for this lies in the fact that native communities are categorically distinguished from rural communities in the Andes. The Andean population is known for its integration into the trading system and would not fulfill the ‘way of life distinction criterion’. This distinction will in turn reopen public debates on the legitimate beneficiaries of the new law on prior consultation which equally excludes rural communities. It introduces a regional perspective that could jeopardise the geographically equal implementation of the law. Apart from regional priorities, the implementers of the new law face challenges that arise in light of ‘self-identification issues’. Whereas governmental institutions and aid agencies discuss the phases of implementation, the corporate sector complains about its feasibility. Mining projects of past decades reveal difficulties in identifying beneficiaries eligible for compensation payments and social benefits. Notably, the final number of self-identified indigenous peoples strongly differs from the results of initial field research undertaken by the corporate sector. At the time of compensation payments, distantly related urban family members join affected community members for receiving benefits in the name of ‘indigenous descent’. Conversely, original community members who migrate to other communities escape legitimate benefits. Similar difficulties are to be expected for Peru’s new participatory model: compensation and shared benefits will find too many ready ‘recipients’. In other contexts, the very nature of the term ‘indigenous’ impedes effective legal implementations. Some indigenous community members do not identify as such; numerous indigenous peoples criticise the term based on its external denomination. Namely, ‘indigenousness’ is considered a colonial and neo-colonial tool for expressing ‘otherness’ instead of for identifying rights-holders. On the other hand, indigenousness is frequently used as an invocation of identity in order to politically avert discrimination and marginalisation. Categorical objections of this kind thus further complicate adequate human rights performance. Instead of identifying legislative or administrative measures as objects of consultation, the new law should devote itself to identifying its subjects: indigenous peoples. Yet, even when one agrees on a definition for “indigenous”, the actual implementation of the law on prior consultation faces further challenges. The law itself bears some intrinsic flaws and seems incompatible with practical factors necessary for its successful implementation.

119 Jessika Eichler (completed her LL.M. degree at the University of Maastricht and Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights in Lund, Sweden. She has gained diverse experience in the field of human rights at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, international cooperation and the NGO sector. As a PhD candidate in human rights at the University of Essex (UK), she focuses on indigenous peoples’ rights in particular) and Fiona Schuler (holds a Master's degree in European Affairs from Sciences Po, Paris and a BA in Media Studies from Ruhr-University Bochum and University of Udine, Italy. She has gained work experience in communications with various development cooperation agencies involving field work in Africa, India and Peru. She has worked for UNESCO, German Agency for International Cooperation and for a member of the European Parliament. Currently Fiona serves as a public affairs consultant advising international companies on political and communication matters). “Keeping Its Promises? Implementing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Peru.” Fair Observer. March 14th, 2013. http://www.fairobserver.com/article/keeping- promises-implementing-indigenous-peoples-rights-peru Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Development K

Perm, do both. Discourse-focus alone fails. Policy analysis on development issues is key. Crush 95 writes120

Development discourse promotes and justiﬁes very real interventions and practices with very real (though invariably unintended) consequences. To incarcerate or conﬁne these (often catastrophic) effects within the text is to embark on a dangerous ‘descent into discourse’ (Palmer I990). In this volume, poetics and politics are generally envisioned as discrete, though interwoven, strands of social life. ln this way, conceptual space is made for an exploration of the links between the discursive and the non-discursive; between the words, the practices and the institutional expressions of development; between the relations of power and domination that order the world and the words and images that represent those worlds. Development discourse is constituted and reproduced within a set of material relationships, activities and powers—social, cultural and geopolitical. To comprehend the real power of development we cannot ignore either the immediate institutional or the broader historical and geographical context within which its texts are produced. The immediate context is provided by ‘the development machine.‘ This machine is global in its teach, encompassing departments and bureaucracies in colonial and post-colonial states throughout the world. Western aid agencies. multilateral organizations, the sprawling global network of NGOs, experts and private consultants, private sector organizations such as banks and companies that marshall the rhetoric of development, and the plethora of development studies programmes in institutes of learning worldwide.

Perm, do both. Reconciling “development” with a rights-based approach is key to policy change. Gauri 3 writes121

Rights are an increasingly important component of international development discourse. At the same time, they are also subject to a number of criticisms. In reality, the criticisms both over- and underestimate the contentions of rights advocates. They overestimate the contentions because most accounts of social rights interpret them as goals and grounds for moral criticism, not as legally binding constraints on the policies and programs of governments and international agencies. Most accounts also hold that rights cannot be realized at once, and that the provision of services can take several forms. The criticisms underestimate the contentions of rights advocates because they fail to recognize the enormous rhetorical importance of rights, both at the international level and within developing countries, and their historical role in the mobilization of social movements, professionals, and others in the expansion of education and health care

services. Although there remain signiﬁcant di ﬀ erences between a rights based

approach and an economic approach to health care and education, particularly regarding the issues of long-term deprivation,

tradeoﬀs, and the behavioral eﬀect of subsidies, their policy consequences overlap considerably. Both are

skeptical that electoral politics and de facto market rules by themselves provide suﬃcient accountability for the eﬀective and equitable provision of health and education

services, and that further intrasectoral reforms in governance, particularly those that strengthen the hand of service recipients, are essential.

120 Jonathan Crush, Professor of Geography at Queen’s University, 1995, “Power of Development”, Google Books 121 Varun Gauri, of the World Bank, 2003, “Social Rights and Economics: Claims to Health Care and Education in Developing Countries”, World Development Vol. 32, No. 3, Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Accountability

Development is key to a moral relationship with the state that’s key to accountability. De Vries 7 writes122

It must be a strange experience for students of development well versed in the latest discussions about ‘post’- or ‘alternative’ development, to be confronted with the thoughts of Andean villagers in the Peruvian highlands. There, when engaging people in discussions about the meanings and costs of development the position is quite clear; what is needed is big and small infrastructure, highways and feeder roads, irrigation systems, dams, schools, town-halls, etc., what in local parlance are called ‘las obritas’ (the small works) they (meaning the state and NGO’s) should bring to us. In fact, when asking the Andean villagers how they would define development their answer is surprisingly straightforward: ‘an extensionist who comes to our field and tells us the kind of fertilisers we should apply in order to increase our yields’. We should not discard these ideas as the naive thoughts of people unaware of the risks development interventions entail. Neither should we see it as a lack of knowledge of the possible dangers and environmental hazards of infrastructural works and agricultural innovations. These people are quite conscious about the momentous consequences, and dangers, of development projects/ programmes for their everyday lives. What they mean to say, though, is that they hold politicians and the state accountable for their unfulfilled promises, the roads that were never built; the schools that never arrived; the jobs that never opened up. In other words, the material progress that was promised but only arrives in their dreams. Obviously, development entails not only material (infra)-structures but also a moral relationship with distant authorities. As one of them put it, ‘the government has taught us that we should desire such obras, and we do hold them accountable for not providing them’.

Accountability is independently key to avoiding extinction. Boggs 97 writes123

The decline of the public sphere in late twentieth- century America poses a series of great dilemmas and challenges. Many ideological currents scrutinized here localism, metaphysics, spontaneism, post-modernism, Deep Ecology intersect with and reinforce each other. While these currents have deep origins in popular movements of the 1960s and 1970s, they remain very much alive in the 1990s. Despite their different outlooks and trajectories, they all share one thing in common: a depoliticized expression of struggles to combat and over-come alienation. The false sense of empowerment that comes with such mesmerizing impulses is accompanied by a loss of public engagement, an erosion of citizenship and a depleted capacity of individuals in large groups to work for social change. As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems that are destroying the fabric of American society will go unsolved perhaps even unrecognized only to fester more ominously into the future. And such problems (ecological crisis, poverty, urban decay, spread of infectious diseases, technological displacement of workers) cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context of inter nationalized markets, chance, and communications. Paradoxically, the widespread retreat from politics, often inspired by localist sentiment, comes at a time when agendas that ignore or side- step these global realities will, more than ever, be reduced to impotence. In his commentary on the state of citizenship today, Wolin refers to the increasing sublimation and dilution of politics, as larger numbers of people turn away from public concerns toward private ones. By diluting the life of common involvements, we negate the very idea of politics as a source of public ideals and visions.74 In the meantime, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The unyielding truth is that, even as the ethos of anti-politics becomes more compelling and even fashionable in the United States, it is the vagaries of political power that will continue to decide the fate of human societies. This last point demands further elaboration. The shrinkage of politics hardly means that corporate colonization will be less of a reality, that social hierarchies will somehow disappear, or that gigantic state and military structures will lose their hold over people's lives. Far from it: the space abdicated by a broad citizenry, well-informed and ready to participate at many levels, can in fact be filled by authoritarian and reactionary elites, an already familiar dynamic in many lesser- developed countries. The fragmentation and chaos of a Hobbesian world, not very far removed from the rampant individualism, social Darwinism, and civic violence that have been so much a part of the American landscape, could be the prelude to a powerful Leviathan designed to impose order in the face of disunity and atomized retreat. In this way the eclipse of politics might set the stage for a reassertion of politics in more virulent guise or it might help further rationalize the existing power structure. In either case, the state would likely become what Hobbes anticipated: the embodiment of those universal, collective interests that had vanished from civil society.75

122 Pieter De Vries (Department of Rural Development Sociology at Wageningen University). “Don’t Compromise Your Desire for Development! A Lacanian/Deleuzian rethinking of the anti-politics machine.” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 27-30. 2007. http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2005/proceedings/developmentglobalization/DeVries.pdf 123 Carl Boggs, National University, 1997, Theory and Society, December, Volume 26, Number 6, p. 773-4 Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

Psychoanalysis

Embracing the promises of development challenges the neg’s misconception of the transcendental nature of development. The perm is key to valuable criticism. De Vries 7 writes124

From my point of view these different approaches fall short for two reasons. First, there is the common assumption that development is instigated from outside, whether through the introduction of new values, or new production and consumption structures, or new ways of relating to nature, the social and the body. Underlying these positions is thus a transcendentalist notion of development as either a vehicular framework of (civic) values, a commodity structure or a foreign constellation of power-knowledge, all supposedly to be targeted on an object (non-developed societies), and constitutive of new subjects (responsible citizens, the bourgeoisie/ proletariat, the Third World). This leads me to the second line of criticism. These theoretical perspectives, do not pay attention to the fact that development generates the kinds of desires that it necessitates to perpetuate itself, that it is an autonomous, self-propelling apparatus that produces its own motivational drives. Paradoxically, the idea of development relies on the production of desires, which it cannot fulfill. In other words, there is a certain ‘excess’ in the concept of development that is central to its functioning. Development thus points to a utopian element that is always-already out of place. Development therefore functions as its own critique. It is this excessive constitutive ‘lack’ in development that this article sets out to interrogate. My argument is that we have to scrutinise this gap between the desire for development and its banalisation in practice in order to understand the modus operandi of the development apparatus. In order to answer this question Lacanian psychoanalytical theory may be useful1 . Thus in Lacanian terms is could be stated that the desire for development fills in a certain lack in its actualisation, it always points towards something else for ‘desire is always the desire of the ‘Other’, the latter standing for the development apparatus as the site where the question of desire originally originates (Zupancic 2000). Desire then is the faculty to produce dreams and utopias (the non- places of development) that are both evoked and betrayed by actual development, yet which renders it so desirable. In Lacanian terms desire is triggered by ’small objects of the other’ (in Lacanese petits objets a) which operate as objects of desire. Examples of these small objects are the works or obritas Andean people refer to when talking about the promises of development. Translated in political terms we could speculate that these dreams or utopias are the expression of a collective subconscious set in motion by the disjuncture between the desire and the actuality of development.

124 Pieter De Vries (Department of Rural Development Sociology at Wageningen University). “Don’t Compromise Your Desire for Development! A Lacanian/Deleuzian rethinking of the anti-politics machine.” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 27-30. 2007. http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2005/proceedings/developmentglobalization/DeVries.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT Transitioning k2 Participation

A participatory approach to development leads to bad policies and has a Western bias. Beaulier 4 writes125 If individuals are given more voice, strategic behavior is not the only thing to worry about. If the ideology is not right, and if individuals are unwilling to compromise and make concessions, no amount of talking is going to improve matters. Indeed, there is no a priori reason to suppose that participatory processes will improve policies. We might reasonably expect policy to worsen when we allow for a more discursive approach to economic development. “Anything goes” when diverse individuals sit down and debate various reforms. If the average citizen is involved in the discourse, many more “free lunch” policies— lacking in economic insight—might result.14 The public does seem to have a bias in favor of “free lunch” policies (Caplan 2001, 2003). Caplan (2003) notes that the median voter tends to support high levels of spending on defense, education, and social security, but, at the same time, to favor low taxes. The result of this high spending but low tax preference is a “free lunch” social welfare function, which cannot be maintained. Besides these public-choice problems, many other troubling aspects attend participatory processes. Benhabib (1986, 272–74) claims that participatory processes presuppose a Western orientation.15 All interested parties cannot engage in an open dialogue when, for example, the custom in some non-Western parts of the world is to keep women out of public affairs. Should developing countries adopt a “participatory” process that excludes certain groups? Or is the ideal participatory process to be imposed regardless of how it meshes with local custom?16 Unfortunately, Stiglitz is silent on these important questions.

125 Scott Beaulier (a research assistant in the Mercatus Center at George Mason University). “Is Discourse Relevant for Economic Development?” Vol 8, No. 3, 2004. http://www.scottbeaulier.com/tir_08_3_beaulier.pdf Aff Blocks Sacred Heart High School

AT RE Inevitable

Resource extraction isn’t inevitable because it kills sustainability. Hennig 11 writes126 Climate change as discussed at the climate talks in Durban is just one of the complex impact that humans have on the natural environment. The history of humanity is closely linked to benefiting from (or exploiting) the natural environment in order to improve living conditions. “Stone, Iron, Bronze and Steel Ages – the names of these periods have been chosen according to the main materials in use“ (see materialflows.net). Over a long period in human history, this behaviour had only little impact on the environment from a global perspective (not least because there were much fewer people around). This has changed considerably since the industrial revolution started spreading across the globe from its British roots. “The industrial revolution marked a fundamental change of the energy system based on fossil fuels and saw the introduction of yet more materials. Coal, steel and aluminium allowed to tremendously increase output and efficiency. With the start of the commercial exploitation of crude oil in the late 19th century, the doors have been opened to a new era which one day might be called the ‘Oil Age’” (see materialflows.net). With growing populations, and an increasingly more intensive and extensive use of natural resources, the human impact on the environment has reached an unprecedented level which has such an impact that the environment becomes considerably transformed by human action. This led to the proclamation of a new geolocial era, the Anthropocene, which pays tribute to the “influence of human behavior on the Earth’s atmosphere in recent centuries“, which is said to be “so significant as to constitute a new geological era for its lithosphere” (quoted from Wikipedia). Extraction of natural resources is one component of this change (amongst many other factors), which often stands at the beginning of the chain of changing and influencing the natural environment. Fossil fuels, minerals, metal ores, and other resources are taken out of their natural deposits, which already has an impact on the environment at the places where they are, and are then burned, processed, and eventually dumped in manifold transformed ways. Material extraction and the subsequent flows of them during their ‘human lifecycle’ (before we regard them as useless waste) are an important element in the understanding of our impact on the natural environment. “A dematerialisation strategy, i.e. a dramatic absolute reduction of our material consumption, will be inevitable – especially in industrialised countries – taking into account the concept of ‘environmental space’. This concept claims that the total amount of natural resources that humankind can use without damaging the global ecosystems is limited” (see materialflows.net). In a collaboration with Worldmapper, the Materialflows project has released a series of cartograms as part of their online portal for material flow data which gives an insight into the shares and dimensions of global resource exploitation. On the basis of the MFA-database we created a series of cartograms where territories are re-sized to different categories of material flows. Here are two examples from the map series that demonstrate some of the aspects investigated in the project.

126 Benjamin Hennig (Senior Research Fellow in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford). “Material flows: global resource extraction.” Views of the world. December 6th, 2011. http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=1979